Months of preparation go into making Carnival the biggest cultural event in the Brazilian calendar. Countless hours are spent perfecting dance routines, designing vibrant costumes and building impressive parade floats. Behind the scenes mobile operators work to ensure their networks can handle the influx of revelers, ensuring that festivalgoers remain connected during the event.
In our previous report, Opensignal examined user experience in the city of Rio de Janeiro during the last Carnival period, assessing the performance of Brazil’s three major mobile operators — Claro, TIM and Vivo. By comparing our users’ mobile experience during the week of the festival to a similar period a month prior we evaluated the resiliency of the mobile network operators (MNOs). In this follow-up, we expand our analysis to four of Brazil’s largest cities, popular for their Carnival celebration — São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife — taking a wider look at users’ experience during the 2025 Carnival period.
Key findings:
- During Carnival, TIM outperformed its peers in all four cities for Consistent Quality, scoring highest across São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife. TIM’s scores ranged from 70.4% in Rio de Janeiro to 75.7% in São Paulo.
- TIM and Vivo share the top spot for overall Video Experience in all four cities. Additionally, TIM and Vivo are joint winners for 5G Availability across the board, sharing the win with Claro in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador.
- Our Vivo users had at least the joint fastest average overall download speeds in each city during Carnival, and at least the joint fastest average overall upload speeds in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife. Claro shares the glory with Vivo for Download Speed Experience in Recife, for Upload Speed Experience in São Paulo and Recife and wins Upload Speed Experience outright in Salvador.
- Claro, TIM and Vivo achieve 5G Availability scores of around 20% in all four cities, jointly sharing first place in each location.
During Carnival, networks performed well — in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife, MNOs often exceeded their national performance. While urban areas may have fewer coverage challenges than rural locations, and may have more assigned 5G spectrum, congestion can be an issue at large-scale events such as festivals. Opensignal’s analysis of last year’s Olympic games in Paris highlighted the impact of congestion on user experience and the steps operators take to ensure a smooth experience for users.
To ensure good connectivity during Carnival, Brazilian operators have reinforced their networks — TIM set up temporary and permanent infrastructure along parade routes and in high-traffic areas. TIM reported that in Recife and Olinda alone 106Tb of data were shared over the operator’s network during this year’s Carnival — an almost 30% increase over the preceding year. Despite the increased activity, operators’ networks remained robust in all four cities, providing fast speeds for social media sharing and downloads, smooth video streaming and reliable connections.
Looking at Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, TIM leads outright for Consistent Quality and 5G Download Speed and places joint first for Video Experience with Vivo. Additionally, all three operators share 5G Video Experience and 5G Availability due to statistically tied scores. Vivo is unmatched for Reliability Experience and Download Speed Experience, placing ahead of Claro in both. Vivo also shares the victory for Upload Speed Experience with Claro, meaning that Vivo is at least a joint winner in six of the eight categories, with TIM tallying five total wins and Claro three.
Compared to the national results from January 2025, the three MNOs performed better in almost every metric, with 5G Download Speed and 5G Video being comparable. Even during Carnival, users in São Paulo spent a much higher proportion of their time with a 5G connection than the national average, contributing to increased scores for Video Experience, Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience. Consistent Quality and Reliability Experience were also significantly above the country average, showing that congestion did not put a dampener on the party atmosphere.
Rio de Janeiro holds the biggest and most well known Carnival event, drawing in millions of attendees over the festivities. During the 2025 Carnival period, our users had the fastest speeds on Vivo’s network, as the operator is outright first for Download Speed Experience, 5G Download Speed and Upload Speed Experience. TIM is the outright winner for Consistent Quality, a result it achieves across all four analyzed cities. Similarly, our users have the joint best on-demand video streaming experience on TIM and Vivo in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Recife — the pair share 5G Video Experience in Recife and statistically tie with Claro elsewhere.
TIM and Claro are joint leaders for Reliability Experience in Rio de Janeiro, sharing first place with scores of 861-865 points on a 100-1000 point scale. While these Consistent Quality and Reliability Experience scores are slightly lower than those in São Paulo, they are still well above those seen nationally in the mobile experience report. As are the 5G Availability scores, with our Rio 5G users spend over a fifth of their time with a 5G connection on all three networks during Carnival — allowing them to make use of the benefits that 5G provides. Operators' preparations to manage traffic from dense festival crowds at locations like the Sambadrome Marquês de Sapucaí ensure a smooth and uninterrupted experience.
Salvador’s Carnival rivals that of Rio de Janeiro, as does its mobile experience. All three operators have one outright win — TIM for Consistent Quality, Vivo for Download Speed Experience and Claro for Upload Speed Experience — and jointly share four more winners’ podiums, with Reliability Experience, 5G Video Experience and 5G Availability being shared among all three. This is Claro’s best award total across all four cities, and its only outright win.
While Recife may be the smallest of the four cities included, its Carnival is no less packed, with streets bustling with dancers and revelers alike. Recife’s free Carnival draws a high concentration of people. Despite this, user experience remained high, with operators outperforming not only the national results but also the other cities in this report in a few metrics. Claro, TIM and Vivo share 5G Download Speed, their scores of 400.3-405.7Mbps above any score seen in the other cities. The same is true for Reliability Experience, with first place shared by Vivo and TIM.
To learn about the national experience of our Brazilian users in more depth, please read our most recent mobile network experience report. To stay updated on all Opensignal insights and articles, sign up for our newsletter.
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