October 15th 2020

In Spain, Movistar consistently offered the best mobile experience to its customers, according to a new report from Tutela, a global crowdsourced mobile data company. The new 2020 State of Mobile Experience Report found that the operator offered its users the highest Excellent Consistent Quality in the country, indicating that in 83.4% of tests, the network was good enough for demanding applications, such as 1080p video streaming,real-time mobile gaming, and HD video calling. Movistar also had the highest Core Consistent Quality at 83.4%, the fastest median download at 25.3 Mbps and upload speed at 9.8 Mbps in the country, as well as the best coverage.  Meanwhile, Vodafone achieved the best one-way latency result in Spain with 22.6 ms. 

To more objectively evaluate when connections are (and are not) enabling users to do those things, Tutela has developed a standard called Consistent Quality. Simply put, it’s two sets of thresholds, called Excellent and Core. If a connection hits the Excellent standard, it means that connection was good enough for demanding applications  including HD group video calling or 1080p video streaming. Meanwhile, Core connection is good enough for SD video streaming, web browsing, emails, and VOIP calling, but users may experience delays or buffering when trying to use more demanding apps.

In Portugal, Vodafone consistently offered the best mobile experience to its customers, with the operator winning in five out of six categories, including the highest Excellent Consistent Quality in the country at 83.3%, the highest Core Consistent Quality at 94.8%, and the fastest median download speed at 24.1 Mbps. The operator did however lose out to NOS in the latency category, with NOS taking the lead by 1 ms for a result of 25.3 ms. 

When examining the countries against one another, Spain dominated in three of the five main categories, including highest Core Consistent Quality at 92.8%, fastest download speed at 21.1 Mbps and best one-way latency at 24.4 ms; whereas Portugal won in the highest Excellent Consistent Quality category at 77.9%  and fastest upload speed at 8.1 Mbps. 

Tutela has analyzed over 7 billion total records taken from real-world smartphone users, including more than 59 million speed and latency tests, taken between March 1st and August 31st 2020. 

Key findings from this report include:

• Movistar consistently offered the best mobile experience in Spain, with the operator taking first place for highest Excellent Consistent Quality, highest Core Consistent Quality, fastest median download and upload speed, and best coverage. 
• Despite its last-place ranking in all other metrics tested, Vodafone came first for best latency result Spain. 
• In Portugal, the story for Vodafone was the opposite: it won in five of the six metrics tested, including highest Excellent and Core Consistent Quality, fastest download and upload speed, and best coverage. 
• Portugal also had the highest Excellent Consistent Quality over Spain by 3.1%, for an Excellent Consistent Quality of 77.9%. For download speed and latency, Spain ranked first whilst Portugal took out the win for upload speed. 

Leandro Demarchi, Sales Director LATAM & Southern Europe at Tutela, said: “Operators in both Spain and Portugal continue to impress us with their results, particularly Movistar in Spain and Vodafone in Portugal. Tutela has recently added new metrics to its 2020 State of Mobile Experience report to test the competitiveness in the market and each operator stepped up to the challenge, with the likes of Orange in Spain just one step behind Movistar in most of the metrics tested. We look forward to watching the 5G progress in both countries over the coming months.”

The full report is available here.