Fiber is the predominant access technology in the Spanish fixed broadband market and wholesale agreements are commonplace — allowing many providers to use each other’s networks. This means that Wi-Fi in the home plays an important role in differentiating ISPs’ consumers’ experience.
In Opensignal’s first report on the Spanish fixed broadband experience, we highlighted the major internet service providers (ISPs) on which our users had the best experience. Here we delve deeper — by segmenting it by Wi-Fi generation and in the case of Wi-Fi 6 by frequency band, to help ISPs understand where they have most room for improvement.
Key findings:
- Our users have a more consistent experience on Wi-Fi 6 using the 2.4GHz band (Wi-Fi 6 2.4GHz) than on Wi-Fi 4 or older across all five operators. The same is true for Wi-Fi 6 (5GHz) versus Wi-Fi 5 across four out of five analyzed providers — with Movistar being the exception. Across all of the providers analyzed, when connected to Wi-Fi 6, our users see faster average download and upload speeds on Wi-Fi 6 (2.4GHz) versus Wi-Fi 4 or older and with Wi-Fi 6 (5GHz) versus Wi-Fi 5.
- Orange squeezes more out of Wi-Fi 6 2.4GHz than its competitors and peers. This helps explain its leadership across all categories in our recent Spain fixed broadband experience report.
- Movistar, which has relatively low scores compared to the other providers in the fixed broadband experience report, has the lowest Broadband Consistent Quality scores compared to its peers when users are on Wi-Fi 4 or older or Wi-Fi 6 2.4GHz connections. The average download speeds experienced by our Movistar users on Wi-Fi 6 5GHz connections — which would typically be expected to provide the best experience — are over 100Mbps slower compared to those seen on average on the other providers.
- DIGI comes top for Consistent Quality on Wi-Fi 4 and shares first place with Yoigo for both Consistent Quality and Upload Speed on Wi-Fi 6 5GHz connections with scores of 91-92% and 314-340Mbps, respectively.
- Yoigo also has the highest scores for Consistent Quality and Download Speed on Wi-Fi 5 connections. In addition, Yoigo ties with Vodafone for the fastest average download and uploads speeds on Wi-Fi 4 or older connections.
- Vodafone is behind its rivals on Upload Speed when our users connect to Wi-Fi 5, as it scores nearly 120Mbps versus the 147-158Mbps seen by users on the other providers.
Users’ fixed broadband experience depends on a large number of factors including speed tiers, data caps, the choice of access technology (e.g. ADSL, cable, or fiber) along with their router and the device(s) they used to connect.
Like mobile phone generations (3G, 4G and 5G) the latest generations of Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi 6 and new-to-the-scene Wi-Fi 7) generally provide users with faster speeds and better experience than previous generations.
While each Wi-Fi generation is typically backwards compatible, users only see the full benefits from a new Wi-Fi generation when it is supported by both their router and their smartphone. When we refer to Wi-Fi generation in this analysis, we are referring to the Wi-Fi generation of the connection. In practice, this is the lowest generation supported by the combination of a users’ router and their smartphone, so if their router supports Wi-Fi 5 and their phone supports Wi-Fi 6, then the connection is via Wi-Fi 5.
In addition to Wi-Fi generation, the frequency band used also affects the fixed broadband experience. The 2.4GHz band travels further and does a better job at propagating through obstacles like walls than 5GHz but at the cost of less available bandwidth and generally higher interference, resulting in slower speeds and worse customer experience. Our users connect almost exclusively to 2.4GHz via Wi-Fi 4 or older, while Wi-Fi 5 only uses the 5GHz band. In contrast, Wi-Fi 6 uses a mix of the two frequency bands.
Consistent Quality measures how often a network, from the perspective of a single device once connectivity is established, meets the requirements for common demanding applications. As might be expected, our users have a more consistent experience on Wi-Fi 6 (2.4GHz) than on Wi-Fi 4 or older across all five operators. The same is true with Wi-Fi 6 (5GHz) versus Wi-Fi 5 across four out of five analyzed providers, with Movistar being the exception.
Movistar places last in the Spain, September 2024, Fixed Broadband Experience report for Consistent Quality. When we split it by Wi-Fi generation, we can see that one factor that is affecting Movistar’s overall score is the consistency of experience on Wi-Fi 4 or older. Its score of 52 percentage points is around 15 percentage points lower than that seen by the other ISPs featured in this analysis. In practice this means that nearly half of the time Movistar households with these older routers (or older smartphones) are not experiencing a minimum level of service to meet modern broadband users’ needs. In addition, Movistar has the lowest score on Wi-Fi 6 2.4GHz connections.
Orange comes top for Consistent Quality on Wi-Fi 6 2.4GHz with a score of 81.2%. DIGI does the same for Wi-Fi 4 and shares first place with Yoigo for Wi-Fi 6 5GHz connections with scores of 91-92%. Yoigo users have the most consistent experience compared to those on other providers on Wi-Fi 5.
Movistar also placed last for Download Speed in the same latest fixed broadband experience report. However, our Movistar users’ average download speeds are in line with those on other major ISPs when connected via Wi-Fi 4 or older or Wi-Fi 5. Movistar’s average download speed on Wi-Fi 6 (5GHz) is more than 100 Mbps slower than that seen on its rivals.
Yoigo users see the fastest average download speeds on Wi-Fi 5, compared to those on other providers — 202.2Mbps.
Across all of the providers analyzed, when connected to Wi-Fi 6, our users see faster average download speeds on Wi-Fi 6 (2.4GHz) versus Wi-Fi 4 or older and with Wi-Fi 6 (5GHz) versus Wi-Fi 5. This is to be expected as Wi-Fi 6 has a host of enhancements over Wi-Fi 5, including more efficient use of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and the ability to consistently use eight spatial streams compared to Wi-Fi 5’s four.
Vodafone and Movistar are in last- and second-to-last place, respectively for Upload Speed in the fixed broadband experience report. Vodafone scores 118.2Mbps when our users were connected to their routers via Wi-Fi 5, compared to the 147-158Mbps seen by our users on the other analyzed ISPs. In addition, our Vodafone and Movistar users see average upload speeds of 192-206Mbps when on Wi-Fi 6 5GHz connections, well below the 276-340Mbps seen on the other three compared providers.
Digi and Yoigo share first place for Wi-Fi 6 5GHz with statistically tied scores of 314-340Mbps, while Yoigo and Vodafone do the same for Wi-Fi 4 and older given their scores of 19-20Mbps.
As is the case for Download Speed, when connected to Wi-Fi 6, our users see faster average upload speeds on Wi-Fi 6 (2.4GHz) versus Wi-Fi 4 or older and with Wi-Fi 6 (5GHz) versus Wi-Fi 5.
We’ve seen that a number of issues affecting the Spanish fixed broadband experience can boil down to issues with specific Wi-Fi generations and/or specific frequency bands. If you would like to discuss how your organisation can benefit from these and deeper insights to drive improvement in your customers’ fixed broadband experience, please reach out to us for a personalized conversation around our solutions.
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