Brazil is a country of immense geographic diversity, featuring shining beaches backing directly onto towering mountains, and tropical savannas transitioning into expansive rainforests. These varied terrains provide unique obstacles to providing optimal mobile network performance. In this report, we use Opensignal’s Consistent Quality metric to evaluate the mobile user experience across Brazil’s 27 federative units (26 states and one federal district). We rank the regions based on their average score. Additionally, we analyze the performance of the country’s three national mobile network operators (MNOs).
Key Findings:
- Our Brazilian users score higher for Consistent Quality in the southern states. Understandably, states like Acre and Rondônia in the rural interior of the continent score worse for Consistent Quality.
- The highest Consistent Quality is in the Federal District. The region containing the capital has not only the highest average score in the country, but also the highest operator score, 74.6% on TIM’s network.
- Consistent Quality is up across all but one region, when compared to the previous year. Year-on-year, Consistent Quality has risen by over five percentage points nationally.
- TIM is the highest scoring operator in Brazil. TIM outperforms both Vivo and Claro nationally and is the highest scoring operator in two-thirds of Brazil’s federative units.
Consistent Quality
Consistent Quality measures if the network is sufficient to support common mobile application requirements at a level that is ‘good enough’ for users to maintain (or complete) various typical tasks on their devices. We combine different experience indicators such as download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet discard, and time to first byte to calculate Consistent Quality. These components are evaluated against thresholds recommended by various more demanding common applications used for a range of common tasks like watching HD video, group video calls, and gaming.
Analyzing the average Consistent Quality score in each state we see that the highest scores are in the southern states. These states — along with the Federal District — have comparatively high population densities and greater urbanization. In densely packed cities it is easier to service more people with fewer resources, leading to better performance. Conversely, interior states such as Acre, Rondônia and Roraima score poorly due to their lower population densities and more rural users.
Opensignal has observed this pattern in various markets worldwide, such as South Africa and Norway, where urban centers outperform their rural counterparts. The case of Amazonas illustrates this well; despite being almost entirely covered in dense jungle, it scores significantly higher than its neighboring states to the north and south because most of its population is concentrated in Manaus. A recent Opensignal analysis on the rural-urban gap in experience in each state underscored this, with Amazonas showing the largest disparity in Consistent Quality between rural and urban users.
Distrito Federal — Brazil’s smallest federative unit and home to the capital, Brasília — scores highest for Consistent Quality at 69.4%. TIM’s score in the region, 74.6%, is the highest in the country, three percentage points ahead of the next closest score — again TIM in São Paulo. The vast majority of the Distrito Federal’s population reside in Brasília, and it has the highest GDP per capita of any of the federative units, allowing operators to more efficiently and profitably enhance mobile experience.
TIM ranks highest for Consistent Quality in over two-thirds of Brazil’s 27 federative units, leading in 18 outright and tying with Vivo in two. Even in the regions with the lowest average scores — Acre, Rondônia and Roraima — TIM’s users enjoy a relatively good experience, at or above the national average. Additionally, TIM users have the most consistent experience in ten of the 11 lowest-scoring states, including many of the most rural states. TIM’s strong performance is driven by its extensive network of cell sites, the largest among the national MNOs, despite having the fewest subscribers — fewer subscribers per site results in less congestion and a better experience. The operator also boasts the highest number of 5G cell sites in the country. The greater number of sites leads to improved network densification, reducing congestion on spectrum bands, and shorter distances to cell sites in rural locations.
Brazil has seen consistent quality improvements across all regions except for Rio Grande do Sul, with a national increase of over five percentage points, from 57.8% to 63%. The northern states of Pará, Amapá, Amazonas, and Rondônia have seen the largest improvements. Despite this, Amapá and Rondônia still rank among the bottom 10 in performance. The introduction of 5G has played a crucial role in enhancing the user experience across the country. New 5G spectrum noticeably improved performance in the federal capital, and across the country people are spending a greater proportion of their time with a 5G connection.
Brazil’s challenging landscape has led to a significant disparity in network quality. States with predominantly rural populations have less consistent user experiences when compared to their urban counterparts. However, many of the lowest-ranking states show the highest year-on-year improvements in Consistent Quality. Enhancements to infrastructure, such as adding more cell sites, will further address this issue and benefit both rural and urban communities.
To learn about the experience of our Brazilian users in more depth, please read our most recent mobile network experience report. And why not stay up-to-date with all the Opensignal insights and articles by signing up to our newsletter?
Individual MNO results
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*Rio Grande do Sul's results may have been affected by the recent floods throughout the state.
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