With holidays and travel plans for summer on everyone’s minds, Opensignal has analyzed our users’ mobile experience on Austria’s highways and railways, and compared that against the average scores seen in the country. We found that our smartphone users generally have a better mobile experience when on motorways and spend more time connected to 5G services and less time with no signal, compared to the country average. Our A1 users experience the fastest download speeds in these areas — meanwhile, those on Magenta’s network see the fastest upload speeds around railways.
Looking at the experience of our Austrian smartphone users between March 1, 2023 and May 29, 2023, those who connect to mobile services around Austrian highways (Autobahns) observe average download speeds clocking in at 60.2Mbps — 26.5% faster than the national average. Our mobile users that travel by Austrian trains also enjoy faster average download speeds than the national average — by 12.2%.
While Download Speed Experience is substantially higher around Austrian highways than on Austrian railways, our users see no statistically significant differences in Upload Speed Experience between these two transportation networks in Austria, with scores of 14.4-14.5Mbps. Similar to Download Speed Experience, our users enjoy faster average overall upload speeds around highways and railways than the national average — as they see Upload Speed Experience around a fifth faster than the national average.
5G Download Speed values achieved around Austria’s highways and railways are statistically indifferent from the national average, with scores ranging from 174.4Mbps to 178.8Mbps. Looking at 5G Upload Speed — we observe a statistical tie between Austrian highways and railways, with scores of 32.4-34Mbps.
Long hours spent in a car or on a train make passengers reach for their smartphones to make the time pass faster. With this in mind, Opensignal looked at the Video Experience and Games Experience of our Austrian users, to see how these fared when our users travel down the highways or railways.
Users around Austrian highways and railways have statistically similar Video Experience, with scores of 72.5-72.7 points on a 100-point scale. Yet, their video streaming experience is slightly better than Austria’s national average of 70.7 points. Video Experience of our users on Austrian highways and railways rates as Very Good (68-78) — this means our users are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling.
When it comes to the experience of playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on mobile devices, there is no statistical difference between that seen by our users on Austrian highways and railways. However, the average Games Experience score for Austria as a whole is around 5.3 points lower than that for Austrian highways and railways.
Seamless signal availability is essential for mobile users, especially in the case of an emergency on a highway. Noteworthily, mobile network reception has been improving along Austrian railways in recent years. Opensignal analyzed two availability measures — Time with no signal and 5G Availability — for Austrian highways and railways, to see how they compare to the national average. Our users in Austria spend a statistically similar time with no signal when traveling on the country’s highway and railway system — 0.4-0.5%, This is significantly lower than the national average of 0.8% time with no signal. Our 5G users also spend similar amounts of time connected to 5G services around both Austria’s highway and railway networks — 20.2-20.9% of the time — and again, this is a substantially better result than the national average of 15.2%.
Comparing the mobile experience of our users between different Austrian operators — our A1 users see the fastest average overall download speed in the country, both when driving down the Austrian highways and when riding the country’s trains. A1’s average download speeds clock in at 71.1Mbps on highways, beating second-placed Magenta by 11.9Mbps (20.1%) and third-placed 3 by 20.8Mbps (41.4%). A1 also takes the top spot for the railways’ area, with a score of 58.8Mbps — although it commands a smaller lead over its competitors, as it beats Magenta by 6.3Mbps (11.9%) and 3 by 11.1Mbps (23.2%).
When it comes to Upload Speed Experience — A1 and Magenta are in a statistical tie around highways, with scores of 15.3-16.5Mbps. However, Magenta comes first for Upload Speed Experience around railways, beating A1 by 2.1Mbps.
The results of our users’ mobile network experience on Austria’s highways and railways align with our earlier analysis of the mobile experience on Germany’s motorways, which demonstrated that our users observe faster speeds and better signal availability on German highways, than the national average. Both highways and railways are essential areas for rolling out 5G networks. Autonomous driving is a key use case that relies on developing 5G connectivity and edge computing. Austria is one of the global pioneers in this field — for example, as one of the host countries the 5G-CARMEN project on the highway connecting Italy to Germany, which is one of the 5G Corridors in Europe.
5GRAIL is another key initiative of the European Commission to foster 5G connectivity for transportation networks in Europe — it was set up to develop the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS), which is planned to be the 5G worldwide standard for railway operational communications. With its location in Central Europe, Austria’s transportation system not only connects Austrian citizens but provides links between other European countries. This makes the country an important hub on the European map, connecting North to South and East to West, and one of the key strategic areas for future 5G roll-outs for transportation systems.
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