connect, the international telecommunication medium, has tested the performance of the mobile networks in Spain. Movistar ranks first, ahead of Orange, Vodafone and Yoigo. The benchmark measured each network's maximum data and voice performance in a series of drive tests and walk tests. The assesments were conducted by international infrastructure and benchmarking specialist umlaut, part of Accenture.
Movistar is “Best in Test” scoring 875 out of 1,000 points possible and received the overall grade “very good”. The operator leads in the Data Services and Crowdsourced Quality category.
Orange achieves a score of 871 points – only four points less than the winner – and also achieved the overall grade “very good”. The operator leads in Voice Services and Reliability.
Vodafone achieves 868 points and also the overall grade “very good”. The operator achieved the highest Speech Quality and Uplink Performance scores in the drive test scenarios. Vodafone also leads in HD Voice Quality.
Yoigo achieves 813 points and the overall grade “good”. The operator improved its score by 59 points over last year, the strongest increase of all operators.
Hannes Ruegheimer, editor at connect magazine, said: “Movistar wins our benchmark for the first time this year, Orange and Vodafone show ‘very good’ results, and Yoigo has improved its score significantly. This is good news for Spanish mobile communications customers.“
The drive tests and walk tests took place in inner-city areas, outer metropolitan and suburban areas, smaller towns and cities along connecting highways in January and February 2023. Four drive test cars traveled 20 cities and 23 towns covering 13,040 kilometers. The selected areas covered around 12,3 million people, approximately 26% of Spain’s population. The crowd-sourced analyses are based on 2.054 billion samples from 769,991 users gathered from the end of August 2022 to early February 2023, representing approximately 98% of the built-up area of Spain and statistically covering 99,5% of Spain’s population. The results of all three tests were thoroughly weighed to achieve a realistic and conclusive assessment of each network’s potential and performance.
connect’s independent mobile network tests, conducted by umlaut, provide a fair, transparent and neutral assessment and comparison of the networks' capabilities to customers, management and supervisory boards of mobile network operators. The assessment was first conducted in Germany more than 20 years ago and has since been extended to Austria, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It has become the de-facto industry standard for customer-perceived network quality.