May 3rd 2021

Switzerland and Austria consistently offered the best mobile experience to its mobile subscribers, when compared to users in Austria, Switzerland and Germany, according to Tutela’s latest 2021 State of Mobile Experience report on the DACH region. 

The report found that the two countries statistically tied for first place for highest Excellent Consistent Quality, with over 86% of connections from subscribers on the main providers in each country having a network experience suitable for use-cases like 1080p video streaming, real-time mobile gaming or HD video calling. 

Within Switzerland itself, Swisscom offered its users the highest Excellent Consistent Quality at 90.1%, beating out Salt and Sunrise by about 8% - a substantial lead.

And within Austria, A1 offered its users the highest Excellent Consistent Quality at 90.0%, beating out 3 and Magenta by about 6%.

In order to benchmark mobile experience over the last six months, Tutela has evaluated over 12 million speed and latency tests, conducted on the smartphones of real-world users of national mobile operators within Common Coverage Areas, between October 1st, 2020 and March 31st, 2021.

Austria may not have found itself on the leaderboard in the other metrics tested, however it kept up with Switzerland throughout: Switzerland had the fastest download speeds in the region at 32.8 Mbps ( only 2.3 Mbps faster than Austria), the fastest upload speeds at 16.6 Mbps, and the most responsive network in the region with a one-way latency result of 12.3 ms. 

Austria:

Overall, Austria and Switzerland had the highest Excellent and Core Consistent Quality in the region, with a statistical tie. By operator, A1 dominated in the country, winning all six of the metrics tested, most importantly having the highest Excellent Consistent Quality at 90%. A1 also had the fastest  median download speed in the country at 40.1 Mbps, the fastest median upload speed at 14.9 Mbps, and the best one-way latency result at 15.0 ms. In a new metric added to Tutela’s report, A1 also demonstrated the greatest relative area coverage across Austria for both 5G/4G combined coverage and total coverage.

Germany:

For Germany, Telekom put on an impressive performance, winning all six metrics tested including the highest Excellent and Core Consistent Quality in the country. Telekom had the fastest median download speed in the country with 31.5 Mbps, the fastest median upload speed at 13.8 Mbps, and the best one-way result at 13.3 ms. In the new metric added, Telekom also demonstrated the greatest relative area coverage across Austria for both 5G/4G combined coverage and total coverage.

Switzerland:

Overall, Switzerland had the highest Excellent and Core Consistent Quality in the region along with Austria in a statistical tie for first place. The country dominated in all other metrics, with a top spot for fastest download speed at 32.8 Mbps, the fastest upload speed at 16.6 Mbps, and the best one-way latency result at 12.3 ms. Swisscom in Switzerland dominated in all six metrics tested including both the highest Excellent and Core Consistent Quality, the fastest download speeds at 39.5 Mbps, the fastest upload speeds at 19.5 Mbps, and the best one-way latency result at 12.0 ms. In regards to the new metric added, Swisscom had the greatest relative area coverage for both 5G/4G as well as total coverage at 744 and 762 points.

Other key findings from the report include:

• While subscribers in all three countries spend the majority of their time connected to 4G, Swiss users on two out of three operator’s networks spend more than 90% of their time on 4G. This is reflected in results for all the KPIs where Switzerland is either the leader or has tied with another operator for place. In other countries in the DACH region, steps are being taken to improve 4G connectivity, for example, in Germany, operators have undertaken initiatives like active network sharing to close 4G coverage gaps in less visited areas.
  
  

Tom Luke, VP at Tutela said: “Mobile subscribers across the DACH region experience incredibly good quality connections. This was especially noticeable with Austria and Switzerland tying for first place in both the Excellent and Core Consistent Quality metric in this report. Each country also had one operator that completely dominated its field: A1 in Austria, Telekom in Germany, and Swisscom in Switzerland, showing their proficiency to continuously provide the best mobile experience to its users.   

As operators continue to move forward with adopting 5G and being rid of 3G, with the likes of Germany doing so this year, users in this region can be confident that these consistent and high quality mobile experiences will continue in the future, even with improvements being made to infrastructure.”

The full report is available online here.