September 2020

What constitutes the best mobile networks in the world? In the minds of many, faster is always better. In the race to 5G, we hear stories of gigabit speeds and operators competing to have the fastest 5G on the market. However, the speeds experienced by consumers during every-day mobile usage tend to be significantly lower – and for many of us, our networks seem just fine, most of the time.

This suggests that the best network may be something different – a network that allows us to do the activities we want, when we want to. In practical terms, this means a network which is both reliable and meets the requirements of the applications we use every day. After all, there’s not much use in a mobile device that can reach high speeds when you’re standing in a specific street corner if you spend most of your time moving around somewhere else. More to the point, infinitely increasing download speeds does not necessarily improve all aspects of network experience.

This is where two composite quality metrics – Excellent and Core Consistent Quality – come in. These measure how mobile connections compare to popular use cases to represent how often a mobile experience is good enough for a consumer to do what they want when they want. In Tutela's Global Mobile Experience report for 2020, we analyze the Excellent and Core Consistent Quality, as well as the median download speed of countries across the globe, to discover which regions offer the best mobile experience for subscribers.