Wide discrepancies have been discovered between the quality and speed of data throughput performance across the mobile broadband networks of 94 carriers in 28 European countries.
According to a recently published by research report by ARCchart, which assessed the mobile broadband networks of carriers across Europe for download, upload, latency and network quality performance, the variation is both shocking and worrying.
The ARCchart study is based on data speed and latency measurements collected using a smartphone speed test app and the firm says millions of individual test readings from tens of thousands of users on
virtually every mobile carrier throughout the world were collected – though the focus of the report is European.
With data taking on an ever important role in telephony – even surpassing voice as people’s number one concern – there has been a surge of scrutiny on the quality of carriers’ broadband services, and many have been left severely wanting.
Some mobile operators reportedly even achieved data speeds “two or three times faster than competing carriers in the same market.”
For example, says the report, in Germany T-Mobile shows the country’s fastest download average of 1,459 Kbps while EPlus manages just 649 Kbps. In the UK, Hutchison’s upload average is 646 Kbps, while Orange is just 212 Kbps.
Multinational carriers, too, perform inconsistently in their respective European territories – for instance, T-Mobile’s download average in the UK is just 676 Kbps whilst T-Mobile Slovakia’s average is almost treble, at 1,743 Kbps.
In terms of separating the best from the worst, ARCchart’s study says Hutchison (Three) Denmark and Mobilkom in Austria top the league tables while Belgium’s networks are the weakest. Meanwhile, the UK and Germany score almost as low as Belgium, while Bulgaria, Croatia and three Scandinavian countries rank top.
While naming and shaming the various European carriers, the report also digs up some rather interesting metrics related to smartphone use across the continent. Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland have the highest smartphone penetrations, says the report, while Turkey, Portugal and Serbia have the lowest.
