March 22nd 2021

Orange offers its subscribers the best mobile experience in France, according to Tutela’s latest 2021 State of Mobile Experience report on the country. Orange dominated in five of the six metrics tested, with one being a statistical tie  with Bouygues. The most important Orange won was achieving the highest Excellent Consistent Quality at 85.1%. Excellent Consistent Quality is Tutela’s metric for measuring when connections are good enough for demanding applications such as 1080p video streaming, real-time mobile gaming and HD video calling. Orange also had both the fastest download and upload speeds, and both the best 4G/5G coverage and total coverage in France. 

Bouygues found itself on the leaderboard alongside Orange with the highest Core Consistent Quality in Common Coverage Areas across France. A connection that meets the Core thresholds should be sufficient to stream standard-definition video or handle day-to-day activities like web browsing or uploading photos to social media. Meanwhile Free Mobile was also a leader in one category tested with the most responsive network at 12.2 ms, although was met with strong competition from the other operators with only 2.1 ms separating last place SFR from Free Mobile.  

In order to benchmark mobile experience over the last six months, Tutela has evaluated over 96 million speed and latency tests, conducted on the smartphones of real-world users of national mobile operators within Common Coverage Areas, between August 1st 2020 and January 31st 2021.

Key findings from this report include:

• Orange was the dominant figure in at least four of the six metrics tested, with a win for highest Excellent Consistent Quality, Tutela’s metric for subscribers’ mobile experience for demanding applications,  in Common Coverage Areas across France at 85.1%, and both the fastest median download and upload speeds in the country. 
• Both Orange and Bouygues tied for the highest Core Consistent Quality, which Tutela uses to measure when a connection is good enough for web browsing, social media sharing and SD video streaming. On both operators, more than 93% of tests were good enough for these applications.
• Free Mobile found itself on the leaderboard with the best one-way latency result at 12.2 ms, however it didn’t come easily with only 2.1 ms separating last place SFR from the operator. 

Tom Luke, VP at Tutela, said: “All four operators in France continue to impress us with the quality of mobile experience it provides to its customers. In particular, Orange may have dominated in five of the six metrics tested, but is still met with strong competition from its counterparts. As soon as 5G begins to be more widely deployed in the country, we can expect that all users will benefit greatly from its operator taking advantage of this technology”. 

The full report is available here.