Denmark State of Mobile Experience 2022

Introduction

In our annual benchmark report for Denmark, we have evaluated 563,141 speed and latency tests, conducted on the smartphones of real-world users of national mobile operators within Common Coverage Areas, between July and December 2021.

Subscribers in the Nordic region have always enjoyed superior telecom services thanks to robust mobile networks built over state-of-the-art infrastructure. Denmark stands out particularly, having secured first place in the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2021 edition — surpassing 26 other EU Member States. Denmark also placed first in the top 30 list of countries for Excellent Consistent Quality in the annual Tutela Global State of Mobile Experience report for 2021. At the same time, all four Danish operators made it to the top 30 operators list with TDC Denmark emerging as the champion.

Throughout the pandemic, with people living, working and studying virtually, the demand for data has been unprecedented. 3 Denmark reportedly claimed that its network data traffic has increased by 58% since the pandemic started. Therefore, in spite of already having strong networks, the Danish telecoms industry continues to invest resources in capacity improvement activities mainly revolving around 5G deployment to efficiently satisfy this demand.

All Danish operators acquired spectrum in the multi-band 5G spectrum auction that concluded in April 2021. While TDC Net acquired spectrum in the 1500 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2.3 GHz, 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz bands, the Telenor-Telia joint venture won spectrum in the 1.5 GHz MHz, 2.1 GHz, 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz bands and 3 secured frequencies in the 2.1 GHz, 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz spectrum bands.

In terms of 5G deployment, Nokia announced that it was supporting Telia and Telenor’s joint venture TTN to modernize their joint network and expedite 5G network expansion using 3.5 GHz spectrum in June 2021. Further, TDC claimed in December 2021 that it became the first Nordic country to reach national 5G coverage having completed its 5G deployment through an upgrade of 3800 cell towers. At the same time, 3 announced that 25% of its masts were upgraded to 5G as well as the addition of about 100 completely new masts by the end of 2021 and a plan to introduce 1000 new masts in total.

Key findings

TDC topped the leaderboard in all the categories in Denmark
TDC had the highest Excellent and Core Consistent Quality at 92.1% and 97.0%. Considering performance on a 5G network independently, the operator led Excellent Consistent Quality with a result of 94.9% and a Core Consistent Quality result of 98.4%. The operator also had the greatest total area coverage scoring 580/1000 as well as the highest video experience score at 4.05.
Telenor and 3 were neck-and-neck in majority of metrics
Telenor placed second for overall Excellent Consistent Quality while 3 came in third at 86.2%. Ranks were interchanged for overall Core Consistent Quality with 3 in second place while Telenor statistically tied with Telia for third. Telenor and 3 tied for second place in the Excellent and Core Consistent Quality metrics on a 5G network. The two operators also tied for second position in the video experience category. Looking at relative coverage scores, while Telenor had the second greatest total coverage score, 3 placed fourth in the coverage category.
Telia outperforms 3 for coverage metrics
While Telia closely followed 3 in the majority of metrics, it outperformed the operator in relative area coverage metrics with a total coverage score of 553 narrowly missing second place by 1 point.

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)
Video experience - determined based on a range of video specific KPIs including stall rate, resolution and buffering time
5G Consistent Quality - how often Excellent Consistent Quality threshold was met while connected to a 5G network

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 methodology here.

Consistent Quality

In Common Coverage Areas across Denmark, TDC had the highest Excellent Consistent Quality with 92.1% of connections good enough for demanding applications like 1080p video streaming, HD group video calling and real time mobile gaming. Telenor secured second place with an Excellent Consistent Quality of 86.7% followed by 3 at 86.2% narrowly missing second place. Telia placed fourth with an Excellent Consistent Quality of 85.6%.

All Danish operators reached the 90% mark 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. TDC took the lead at 97.0%, followed by 3 at 95.3%. Telenor and Telia statistically tied for third place at 94.8% and 94.7% respectively.

Looking at performance on a 5G network, TDC again topped the leaderboard with an Excellent Consistent Quality of 94.9% in Common Coverage Areas across the country. Telenor and 3 tied statistically for second place while Telia came in fourth at 84.9%.

A similar pattern emerged for Core Consistent Quality with TDC in the lead at 98.4% followed by Telenor and 3 tying statistically for second place, while Telia placed fourth at 93.2%.

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KPI performance

The table below shows a breakdown of individual KPIs for each operator.

	TDC NET	Telenor	Telia	Three
Download % above 5 Mbps	98.0%	94.1%	94.4%	95.6%
Upload % above 1.5 Mbps	98.1%	97.1%	96.9%	95.5%
Latency % below 50 ms	99.9%	99.8%	99.7%	99.8%
Jitter % below 12 ms	98.8%	98.9%	98.8%	98.4%
Packet discard % below 1%	99.0%	97.8%	96.2%	96.5%

5G KPI performance

The table below shows a breakdown of individual KPIs for each operator for 5G only.

	TDC NET	Telenor	Telia	Three
Download % above 5 Mbps	99.2%	97.8%	96.8%	97.5%
Upload % above 1.5 Mbps	98.9%	97.6%	97.9%	98.3%
Latency % below 50 ms	100%	100%	99.7%	100%
Jitter % below 12 ms	99.4%	96.3%	96.9%	99.1%
Packet discard % below 1%	98.6%	95.1%	94.4%	92.0%

Denmark

Introduction

In our annual benchmark report for Denmark, we have evaluated 563,141 speed and latency tests, conducted on the smartphones of real-world users of national mobile operators within Common Coverage Areas, between July and December 2021.

Report statistics

Operators

Key findings

Mobile Experience Awards

Understanding this report

Consistent Quality

Consistent Quality

Coverage

Coverage

Video experience

Video streaming

KPI performance

5G KPI performance

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