DACH - Key Findings

Chapter 1 Key findings	Chapter 4 Latency
Chapter 2 Consistent quality	Chapter 4 Spectrum and technology usage
Chapter 3 Download and upload speeds	Chapter 6 Coverage

Key findings

Switzerland had the best consistent quality and fastest average download speeds across the region. Swiss operators also took home all the individual awards, with Sunrise winning the best consistent quality, and Swisscom posting the best average download speed.
German networks continue to rely heavily on 3G, particularly in rural areas. Germany recorded an average of 33.3% mobile data usage over 3G; those numbers were just 10.4% and 18.0% in Switzerland and Austria respectively.
Despite Austria’s networks handling some of the highest data usage rates in the world, both 3 and A1 delivered consistent quality on par with operators in other countries. 3 took first place for best excellent consistent quality within the country, while A1’s superior rural coverage helped it overtake 3 to deliver the best basic consistent quality.

Methodology

Tutela measures network quality based on the real-world experience of millions of users. We employ software installed in more than 3,000 partner apps to actively test network performance, conducting download, upload, and server response tests against Tutela-configured servers. The tests are conducted randomly and in the background to avoid sampling bias, with a testing configuration designed to emulate and measure real-world user activity, not maximum network throughput.

At the heart of Tutela’s throughput testing is our use of small, lightweight files (2MB for download and 1MB for upload), which are designed to mimic the way that people actually use their devices. The most common smartphone uses include things like web browsing, using weather apps, written communication with friends and colleagues, playing games, or reading the news -- all of which involve sending and receiving small data packets. How a network performs depends on the size and type of data packets being sent and received, which is why Tutela uses a small, fixed file size to test how the network handles typical traffic -- rather than huge files of several hundred megabytes, which are representative of downloading huge apps, entire movies to watch offline, and little else.

Unlike traditional methods of benchmarking mobile network performance, the crowdsourcing techniques employed by Tutela don’t inherently offer a head-to-head comparison of operators in exactly the same location. Crowdsourcing is complementary to drive-test techniques and measures network performance wherever users are actually using the network -- which, if you’re seeking to examine the real-world experience of subscribers using their own devices on the network, is exactly what you’d be after.
In addition to working in the background (to eliminate user-initiation bias) and testing using representative packet sizes, Tutela also employs the largest crowdsourced population in the world for mobile network testing. Our software is present on over 250 million Android and iPhone devices globally, and our network collects over 10 billion mobile data measurements every day. Our data scientists analyze results for countries on a monthly basis and tabulate the results into reports. Our custom analytics solution, Tutela Explorer, updates with new measurements on a daily basis, and enables operators to chart, map, and filter over 80 key performance indicators into customized dashboards to help them better understand network performance, enhance customer Quality of Experience, and benchmark their network against competitors.

Consistent quality by country >