Over 8% of smartphone users in New Zealand see average download speeds below 10Mbps

In this Opensignal analysis, we segment our users in New Zealand based on the quality of their mobile experience on three measures: Download Speed, Time with no signal and Video Experience. This highlights the significant minority of smartphone users that have a much worse experience than the average. Opensignal’s analysis reveals that 8.4% of smartphone users in New Zealand experience average download speeds below 10Mbps, 12% typically have a Poor Video Experience, and 4% of users spend over 5% of their time with no mobile signal.

National figures can hide the areas where users have a suboptimal experience. We’ve seen that even in a metropolis as densely populated as New York City there can be pockets where people struggle with their mobile service. Now we examine the proportion of Kiwi mobile users that are disadvantaged because they have a much worse mobile experience than the average.

Average overall download speeds in New Zealand are 40.7Mbps. However, when we segment smartphone users it’s clear that a large percentage of people experience far slower average mobile speeds. In fact, 8.4% of users see average download speeds below 10Mbps, while more than a third (34.4%) see speeds below 25Mbps.

While on average Kiwi users spend 0.9% of their time with no mobile signal a significant minority of users have a much worse experience: 4% of users spend more than 5% of their time without a signal.

Turning to Video Experience — on average our users in New Zealand have a Good (58-68) experience, with a score of 63.9 on a 100-point scale when streaming mobile video. However, 19.3% of users’ Video Experience places at least one category lower, with 12% observing a Poor (below 48) experience and an additional 7.3% of users having only a Fair (48-58) experience. These users encounter higher loading times and/or higher levels of stalling than the average, or are only able to stream video at lower resolutions. 

Comparing five of New Zealand’s largest cities, Napier-Hastings has the largest proportion of users with average download speeds below 10Mbps — 11.8%, followed by Wellington with 10.4%. However, just 23% of users in Wellington see speeds below 25Mbps — the smallest proportion out of the five cities. Impressively in Tauranga, only 6% of users have average download speeds below 10Mbps, while 18.1% see speeds above 100Mbps.

5.4% of our users in Wellington spend more than 5% of their time with no signal — the highest proportion of users across the five cities and 1.4 percentage points higher than the New Zealand national average. Christchurch, Tauranga and Auckland follow with 5%, 4.8% and 4%, respectively. Things are quite different in Hamilton and Napier-Hastings where only 2.3% and 2% place in this category.

 
While Napier-Hastings and Hamilton do well in terms of the proportion of users that spend a lot of time with no signal, the same cannot be said for Video Experience. 18.2% of our users in Napier-Hastings have a Poor (below 48) Video Experience, with Hamilton and Tauranga, following with 13.7% and 13.1% respectively. In contrast, Wellington and Auckland have the smallest proportion of users with a Poor Video Experience — 8.4% and 8.9%, respectively. A Poor Video Experience means that our users, on average, encountered very high loading times or high levels of stalling or were only able to stream the video at resolutions below 720p.

Keep an eye out for future analysis on New Zealand’s mobile network experience as part of Opensignal’s ongoing mission to advance connectivity for all by providing operators, mobile users, network vendors, regulators and policymakers with the information they need on users’ real-world mobile experience.