Deutsche Telekom leads on Euro mobile experience

Analyst Opensignal has produced a report of the key benchmark of consistency of mobile experience across Western European operator groups, with Deutsche Telekom’s European operators performing “extremely” well with seven out of 10 operators placed first outright for consistent quality (CQ).

Opensignal regards the CQ metric as crucial in assessing whether networks can reliably support common mobile tasks at a satisfactory level, such as video calls and social media usage. Rather than focusing solely on speed, it said CQ highlights the user experience by measuring when networks fail to meet the expected performance for everyday tasks, as these moments shape users’ perception more than occasionally fast speeds.

When calculating CQ in its study, Opensignal combined different experience indicators such as download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet discard and time to first byte to calculate the metric. The proportion of tests that pass the requirements of CQ was multiplied by the test success ratio, which is the proportion of completed tests to all tests conducted. Tests that passed indicated that activities such as video calling, uploading an image to social media or using smart home applications will be possible without noticeable lag or slowdown.

Opensignal noted that one of the most striking differences between Europe and some other regions is the issue of fragmentation. That is, the continent is a patchwork of small to medium-sized countries by population, all of them with their own regulatory frameworks and differing access to spectrum. For an operator on its own in a single market, it’s hard to build economies of scale.

The analysis focused on six operator groups’ year-on-year performance, comparing where each operator stood in its home market and evaluating how operator groups as a whole were progressing.

The groups featured had a combined market share of 46% when calculated across the European markets where one or more of these groups are presented, based on GSMA Intelligence data for total mobile connections. This meant that identifying and applying best practices in groups to improve the mobile experience would have a positive impact on a large number of consumers across Europe.

The results showed that the European operators with the highest CQ scores in each operator group were A1 Group – A1 (Bulgaria); Deutsche Telekom Group – T-Mobile (Czechia); Orange Group – Orange (Slovakia);  PPF Group – Yettel (Bulgaria); United Group – Telemach (Croatia and Slovenia); and Vodafone Group – Vodafone (Netherlands).

Drilling down, Opensignal highlighted Deutsche Telekom as taking an overall lead, with its European operators performing “extremely well” across their home markets, with seven out of 10 operators placing first outright for CQ. Out of the six operator groups analysed, no other group achieved this level of success. However, half of A1 Group’s operators placed first in their respective markets either outright or jointly, and the same was true for the United Group.

Vodafone Group operators were revealed as moving up the rankings with four out of 10 improving their rank versus their non-Vodafone rivals year on year, while the others have maintained their rank from June–August 2023. By contrast, the study showed three out of five PPF Group operators analysed have dropped down a rank in their respective markets since June–August 2023, while the other two kept their existing rankings.

Operator groups were seen as varying widely in terms of how much central control and influence “head office” exerts over their individual branches. Opensignal noted that Telia Group was becoming more decentralised, dropping its central common products and services function. Some groups chose to present themselves to consumers as a single brand – Orange and Vodafone – while others comprised a mix of different brands.