In our annual benchmark report for Spain, we have evaluated over 9 million speed and latency tests, conducted on the smartphones of real-world users of national mobile operators within Common Coverage Areas, between April 1st, 2021 and September 30th, 2021.
Data consumption grew exponentially during the pandemic and even as pandemic - related restrictions are now being relaxed, the demand for telecom services continues to grow. In Spain, traffic on Vodafone’s network reportedly grew by 30% in summer, mainly due to video streaming apps such as YouTube and Tik Tok. To keep up with this demand, operators around the world had to adapt and undertake different initiatives. For example, Telefonica reportedly increased its 5G coverage to 150 coastal resorts to meet summer tourist demands.
While operators approach this challenge in different ways, improving capacity through 5G deployments is what the majority of operators are focussing on. The Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation conducted two spectrum auctions for different frequency bands this year, both concluding in a day. The 3.5 GHz auction that concluded in February, had two winners, Orange and Telefonica - each having acquired a 10 MHz block of the frequency band. The second auction for the 700 MHz frequency band took place in July where Telefonica, Orange and Vodafone all secured 2×10 MHz blocks of these critical frequencies. The Spanish government also plans to conduct an auction for the 26 GHz band between the end of 2021 and early 2022.
Other initiatives by operators included Masmovil rolling out VoLTE services for its Android customers in July while iOS users were expected to get this service by September 2021. The operator also had an agreement with Vantage Towers where it will use the tower company’s infrastructure to speed up its 5G deployment.
Report statistics
Date range: 1 April 2021 - 30 September 2021 Download & response tests = 9.3 million Total measurements = 542 million
Operators
Movistar Orange Vodafone Yoigo
Report statistics
Key findings
Movistar has the best mobile experience and coverage in Spain Movistar has the best mobile experience overall with an Excellent Consistent Quality of 83.2% and a Core Consistent Quality of 93.5%. For mobile experience on 5G alone, the operator had a clear win for Excellent Consistent Quality with a result of 91.5%, while it statistically tied for first place with Orange and Yoigo when it came to Core Consistent Quality. The operator also had the greatest relative coverage score for both 4G/5G combined and total coverage, and the greatest relative coverage while looking solely at 5G.
Movistar also tops the leaderboard for video streaming In Tutela’s newest metric that measures subscriber’s video streaming experience, Movistar again performed best, with the highest video experience score of 3.87 thus topping the leaderboard in all the metrics tested for this report.
Orange rivals Movistar with a consistently strong performance Orange placed second for both overall Excellent and Core Consistent Quality as well as Excellent Consistent Quality on a 5G network while it placed first in a tie for 5G Core Consistent Quality. It also placed second for video experience with a score of 3.76 and a 5G coverage score of 35.
Yoigo outperforms Orange for 4G/5G and total coverage Yoigo was a strong yet versatile competitor to second best Orange with its own strengths and weaknesses. It outperformed Orange for second place for relative area coverage for both 4G/5G combined as well as total coverage with scores of 488 and 553 respectively, likely as a result of the network sharing agreements that Yoigo has in place with both Movistar and Orange. Also, it placed first in a tie for Core Consistent Quality on 5G meaning subscribers on its 5G network would get a superior mobile experience for everyday use-cases such as web browsing.
Vodafone outcompetes Yoigo in video experience metric While the operator needs work to catch up in other metrics with its competitors in Spain, it did have a good performance when it comes to video streaming. It outperformed Yoigo with a video experience score of 3.72 narrowly missing second place.
Mobile experience awards
Discover the top performing operators for overall experience and 5G in our mobile experience results table.
The contents of this report and the awards shown above are copyright Tutela; organizations may republish the awards and results above for editorial purposes; non-commercial uses and on unsponsored social media posts. For all other uses, please contact awards@tutela.com.
Understanding this report
This report encompasses the following experience KPIs:
Excellent Consistent Quality- the percentage of the time that a network met the minimum recommended performance thresholds for HD video, group video conference calls and gaming
Core Consistent Quality- the percentage of the time that a network met the minimum recommended performance thresholds for lower performance applications including SD video, voice calls and web browsing
Coverage Score - the relative geographic coverage of an operator, compared with other operators, scored out of 1000 (please note that the score is not a representation of the percentage geographic coverage in a country)
5G Consistent Quality - how often Excellent Consistent Quality threshold was met while connected to a 5G network
5G Coverage - the relative geographic 5G network coverage of an operator, compared with other operators, scored out of 100 (please note that the score is not a representation of the percentage geographic coverage in a country)
To ensure a fair comparison between operator performance, Tutela limits the results used in our comparisons to those collected within Common Coverage Areas.
Learn more about our benchmarking methodologyhere.
Consistent Quality
Consistent Quality
Movistar had the highest Excellent Consistent Quality in Common Coverage Areas across Spain with 83.2% of connections good enough for demanding applications like 1080p video streaming, HD group video calling and real time mobile gaming. Trailing by 7%, Orange placed second at 76.2% followed by Yoigo at 71.2%. Vodafone was in fourth place at 61.4% with a difference of 21.8% between the operator and first placed Movistar.
For Core Consistent Quality, Tutela’s metric for when a connection is good enough for use cases such as web browsing, social media sharing and SD video streaming, Movistar placed first at 93.5%. Orange was in second place at 90.9% closely followed by Yoigo at 89.5% while Vodafone placed last with a Core Consistent Quality of 85.4%.
For Consistent Quality performance on a 5G network, Movistar again topped the leaderboard with an Excellent Consistent Quality of 91.5% in Common Coverage Areas across the country. The trend continued with Orange securing second place in this category at 89.4% followed by Yoigo at 87.4% and Vodafone in last place at 75.2%.
All four operators reached the 90% threshold for Core Consistent Quality with a statistical tie for first place between three operators: Movistar, Orange and Yoigo, meaning subscribers on all three operators had an identical experience on a 5G network for everyday use cases such as web browsing and social media sharing. Vodafone placed fourth with a Core Consistent Quality of 90.0%.
Movistar had the largest relative area coverage in Spain, with a 4G/5G coverage score of 529 and a total coverage score of 577. In terms of 5G coverage, the recently introduced metric in our reports that measures coverage out of 100, Movistar again scored highest with 85 points. While insightful, this observation is not surprising since Telefonica had already covered 80% of Spain’s population by the end of quarter one of 2021 spanning 1,253 towns and cities.
Yoigo had the second greatest 4G/5G as well as total coverage score. With a 4G/5G coverage score of 488, it trailed behind Movistar by 41 points, while the difference between Movistar and Yoigo for total coverage was 24 points, with Yoigo securing 553 out of 1000. However, for 5G coverage score, Yoigo was pushed to third place with a score of 27/100.
Orange scored 477 for combined 4G/5G coverage and 528 points out of 1000 for total coverage. Although it placed third across all network generations, Orange outperformed Yoigo when it came to 5G coverage only, having a score of 35 out of 100. The operator however, is expanding its coverage steadily with 442 towns and cities already connected to 5G as of May, 2021 and a goal to reach 90% of the country’s population by 2022.
Vodafone placed last with a 4G/5G score of 472 and total coverage score of 524 closely following Orange. However, looking at 5G coverage independently, the operator has a lot of catching up to do having a score of a mere 8 out of 100. Having acquired two 10 MHz blocks of spectrum in the 700 MHz band in an auction that was conducted in July 2021, it can be expected that this score will keep improving over time.
Video Experience Score evaluates the quality of experience subscribers are getting while video streaming and is calculated on a scale of 1-5. Operator scores in this category were extremely close with Movistar in the lead at a score of 3.87. Orange placed second with a score of 3.76 closely followed by Vodafone at 3.72. Yoigo was pushed to fourth place with a video experience score of 3.68.
The table below shows a breakdown of individual KPIs for each operator.
Movistar
Orange
Vodafone
Yoigo
Download median
28.2 Mbps +/- 0.04 Mbps
26.0 Mbps +/- 0.05 Mbps
20.0 Mbps +/- 0.04 Mbps
20.6 Mbps +/- 0.03 Mbps
Download % above 5 Mbps
93.5%
88.3%
77.9%
90.1%
Upload median
10.8 Mbps +/- 0.02 Mbps
9.4 Mbps +/- 0.02 Mbps
8.1 Mbps +/- 0.01 Mbps
8.0 Mbps +/- 0.01 Mbps
Upload % above 1.5 Mbps
93.8%
92.2%
93.2%
88.6%
Latency % below 50 ms
99.9%
99.8%
99.8%
99.5%
Jitter % below 12 ms
98.5%
96.8%
97.8%
97.5%
Packet discard % below 1%
98.2%
97.3%
92.3%
90.9%
5G KPI performance
The table below shows a breakdown of individual KPIs for each operator for 5G only.
Movistar
Orange
Vodafone
Yoigo
Download median
39.9 Mbps +/- 0.64 Mbps
76.6 Mbps +/- 1.69 Mbps
52.8 Mbps +/- 0.72 Mbps
46.0 Mbps +/- 1.14 Mbps
Download % above 5 Mbps
98.0%
98.0%
90.6%
97.9%
Upload median
14.8 Mbps +/- 0.24 Mbps
14.2 Mbps +/- 0.38 Mbps
14.2 Mbps +/- 0.38 Mbps
14.0 Mbps +/- 0.39 Mbps
Upload % above 1.5 Mbps
98.1%
97.0%
98.4%
96.7%
Latency % below 50 ms
99.9%
100%
99.9%
99.9%
Jitter % below 12 ms
98.8%
98.5%
99.0%
98.3%
Packet discard % below 1%
97.6%
96.8%
92.4%
94.4%
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