Key findings in OpenSignal’s “State of the Mobile Network Experience” report

According to a new OpenSignal report, South Korea is well ahead of any other country in the world when it comes to Download speed experience, with average speeds topping 50 Mbps.   Only Norway comes close, with even third-placed Canada a clear 10 Mbps behind.  OpenSignal saw a huge range of scores in this metric, with the lowest average score being less than 2 Mbps.

Download Speed Experience_Opensignal State of Mobile Network Experience 2019

The biggest variation between Upload speed experience scores of our users was at the top end of the table, where the gap between leader Denmark and tenth-placed Canada was over 5 Mbps.

In only 13 of the 87 countries we rated our users averaged Latency experience scores under 40 milliseconds, while none scored under 30ms. One continent dominated our Latency Experience analysis, with six European countries in our top 10.5G’s designers target much improved latency as one of their goals.

At the other end of the scale we inevitably have developing countries, but it’s surprising to see India still lagging at 6.8 Mbps average despite all the investment from Reliance Jio, which has been focused on coverage rather than speed.   India is doing a lot better in terms of 4G availability. The average Indian mobile user has access to 4G about 91% of the time according to OpenSignal.

Only four European countries made OpenSignal’s 4G Availability top 10 — the fewest of any of our award metrics. And both the U.S. and India made the top 10, despite being distinctly mid-table in all other key metrics.  One of the standout countries to feature in the top five of our 4G Availability rankings was the U.S. which was distinctly mid-table across all other key award metrics but managed a fifth-place finish in 4G Availability. In our most recent Mobile Network Experience USA report, we saw Verizon overtake T-Mobile following a fierce battle in this metric. This rivalry has driven up 4G Availability in the country, leading to a world-class position for the U.S. in our rankings.

4G Availability_Opensignal State of Mobile Network Experience 2019

Indeed, 4G is becoming more and more ubiquitous, even in developing markets. OpenSignal’s analysis shows that the average 4G Availability
across the 87 countries experienced by our users is close to 80%, with 15 markets scoring over the 90% mark. The top ends of our tables were
largely dominated by European countries, but no one country appeared in the top 10 for all five of our key metrics. European countries, however,
dominated, racking up far more top 10 entries than any other region.

In a ranking of the 10 countries who scored highly across all five key metrics, only two were from outside Europe.

Comparison of leading countries in Opensignal key metrics_Opensignal State of Mobile Network Experience 2019

Norway was #1 in the Video Experience category despite of being even worse than Korea when comes to latency.  Hungary was #2.  Astonishingly,  only six non European countries among the top 25 who all scored a Very Good rating (65-75 out of 100).

5G should mean more consumers will be able to enjoy a good mobile Video Experience more often because of the increased mobile capacity new high frequency 5G spectrum will provide to mobile operators.

You can download the complete OpenSignal (free) report here.

 

 

 

4 thoughts on “Key findings in OpenSignal’s “State of the Mobile Network Experience” report

  1. I suppose this means that as wireless performance gets better, it becomes a more perfect substitute for landline broadband (which also has a huge wireless component in the form of WiFi).

    Of course, wireless and wired are still not perfect substitutes and as long as the spectrum is limited to three carriers (assuming Sprint/T-Mobile merger is approved), how well the landline broadband providers can compete against wireless providers may be somewhat dependent upon how willing wireless providers are to wholesale bandwidth on competitive terms.

  2. Ken, Thanks for your comment. As you well know, Verizon is positioning their “5G” fixed mobile access as a replacement for landline/wired broadband, including their own FiOS.

    However, I am a huge fan of FTTP which has been prevalent in Asia for years, but besides your home office, not so common in the U.S. For example, I can not get FTTP in my condo complex and no other Santa Clara, CA resident I know has it.

  3. Excellent IEEE Techblog you have here. It’s hard to find quality writing and objective fact checking like you do regularly. I really appreciate authors like you that distill the key takeaways from market research reports like OpenSignal’s!

Comments are closed.