Many long distance journeys are grey and repetitive, with one stretch of motorway looking just like the next. It’s no wonder then that as passengers, we often turn to our mobile devices to pass the time, and prevent our children from asking “Are we there yet?” with escalating frequency. More practically, we rely on mobile connections to navigate from A to B and to call the breakdown services in the event of a flat tire or some other roadside emergency.
Given the critical role connectivity now plays in navigation, safety, and entertainment, understanding mobile experience along major transport corridors is increasingly important. In this analysis, we quantify that experience across three countries — France, Italy and Switzerland — before the summer driving season starts in earnest.
Our analysis has revealed differences in which operators provide the best experience to our users when they’re on or near motorways and railways, compared to that seen nationally in our mobile experience reports, reflecting differences in their deployment strategies.
Key Findings
- Our users in France, Italy and Switzerland see faster average overall download speeds on or near motorways and railways* than the national averages. A contributing factor is that 5G users in these countries spend more time utilizing an active 5G connection on or near motorways and railways than nationally. The higher users’ 5G Availability scores, the more their overall experience is shaped by their time on 5G networks.
- In all three countries, our users on or near motorways and railways have a more reliable and consistent mobile experience than the national average. Motorways and railways often exclude remote areas and regulators often require operators to provide coverage along major transport routes.
- In Italy, TIM shares first place with Vodafone for Games Experience on or near motorways and railways. This is despite Vodafone being the national winner for Games Experience. In addition, TIM and Vodafone share first place for Video Experience on or near railways, in contrast to the national results, which have Vodafone tying with Iliad for Video Experience.
- Over in France, Free Mobile shares first place for users’ motorway Games Experience alongside SFR. This is in contrast to the national picture, which has SFR tying alongside Bouygues.
- Vodafone has the highest score for 5G Availability on or near motorways and railways in Italy. This means that Vodafone 5G users can benefit more from the superior experience that 5G provides compared to older technologies. This is in contrast to the latest mobile network experience report for Italy, which has WindTre leading for 5G Availability nationally.
*When we refer to the motorway or railway mobile experience or just “motorways” or “railways” in the context of mobile experience, we are referring to the mobile experience of all Opensignal users within 100 meters of the centerpoint of either a motorway or a railway.
When we compare the Reliability Experience and Consistent Quality of our French, Italian and Swiss users, Switzerland comes out on top, regardless of whether we look at the national experience, that on or near motorways or the same for railways. In both France and Italy, our users’ motorway experience is more reliable than that for railways.
In all three countries, the reliability and consistency of our users’ experience on or near motorways and railways is greater than the national average. While this may seem counter intuitive, the national averages are affected by the experience of people in remote locations that may have little in the way of mobile infrastructure to support them. In addition, regulators often require mobile operators to build mobile sites along major transport routes.
For example, French operators have to meet a number of transport coverage obligations, which were expanded in November 2020 as part of the allocation of spectrum in the 3.5GHz band. By the end of this year, for motorways they have to provide maximum theoretical download speed of at least 100Mbps per antenna sector and a latency of less than 10ms (extending to main link-type roads by the end of 2027), while for railways, 90% of daily trains across France’s regional rail network need to have 4G coverage. According to Arcep, at the end of 2024, priority road routes’ and regional railways’ 4G coverage were theoretically estimated to be 99.4-99.9% and 97.6-99.7%, respectively, depending on the operator.
In Italy, 5G coverage obligations were imposed collectively on the bidders that acquired 700MHz spectrum — within 42 months of the spectrum being made available, 5G had to cover all the main roads, railways, motorways, high-speed trains and railway stations. However, in each location, only one operator had to provide 5G service, but they are required to offer this to the other operators via roaming agreements. The 700MHz spectrum licences came into force at the start of 2019, so the 42 month deadline has long since passed. Looking ahead, Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan has the goal of bringing 5G coverage to an extra 12,600km of extra-urban roads and corridors by June 2026.
Across all three countries, our users’ average overall download speeds are significantly faster on or near motorways and railways than the national averages. In addition, motorway download speeds are faster than the speeds seen on or near railways. A key contributing factor is that our 5G users spend more time utilizing an active 5G connection on or near motorways — meaning that overall speeds are influenced to a higher degree by the speeds users see when they have a 5G connection. Italy tops the charts for motorway and railway 5G Availability. However, Swiss users see the faster download speeds on or near them. Based on our recent analysis, all three countries surpass Germany nationally in 5G Availability, but only Italy exceeds Germany’s 5G Availability specifically on motorways and railways.
How well do mobile networks travel with you?
Playing mobile multiplayer mobile games on or near motorways helps the hours spent in the back seats pass quickly — provided latency, jitter and packet loss are low. This is a particularly pressing concern in France. During the summer months, infamous traffic jams are caused by those returning from their July holidays combined with those setting out on their August vacations — ‘le chassé-croisé des juillettistes et des aoûtiens’. SFR and Free Mobile have the edge in this regard, given their statistically tied scores of 76.7-78.2 points for motorway Games Experience on a 100 point scale. These two operators also share first place for railway Games Experience alongside Bouygues. The national results (measured across the whole of France) have SFR and Bouygues sharing the winners’ podium.
Over in Italy, TIM shares first place with Vodafone - both for motorways and railways. This is in contrast to what is seen nationally for Games Experience, with Vodafone being the sole winner in our latest report.
While Switzerland doesn’t have the same issue as France when it comes to summer traffic jams, the next few months are some of the best times to travel on Swiss roads, due to the fact that a lot of the higher mountain passes close for winter. For those whose urge to play one more round of Fortnite or Arena or Valor outweighs the need to take in the often stunning surroundings, Swisscom is the operator of choice, given that our Swisscom users observe the best motorway and railway Games Experience.
In Switzerland, the stakes when it comes to railway mobile connectivity are higher than those in France and Italy. Wi-Fi there is only available on international trains, so Swiss passengers mainly rely on mobile connections. Usage on long-distance SBB trains (IC and IR) is encouraged via the SBB FreeSurf app, which allows users on all three operators (along with Galaxus Mobile and Quickline) to surf the internet using their mobile connections for free. Our Swisscom users have the best experience when streaming on-demand video on or near railways, with a score of 74.7 points on a 100-point scale.
Those wanting to kill time onboard a TGV train in France may be interested to know that Orange has the best Video Experience on or near railways, as its score of 73.7 points gives it a clear lead over SFR’s and Bouygues’ statistically tied scores of 71.8-72.2 points. Over in Italy, TIM and Vodafone are statistically tied for first place — a difference from the latest mobile network experience report which has Vodafone and Iliad sharing the honors nationally for Video Experience.
Orange racks up the highest score for 5G Download Speed for railways and motorways — not just nationally, but compared to all the operators across all three analyzed markets. In addition, it is the only operator in this analysis to exceed 300Mbps.
Vodafone Italy is the country’s champion for 5G Download Speed with scores of 218.8 and 229.5Mbps for motorways and railways experience, respectively.
Our Swisscom users see the fastest average 5G download speeds in Switzerland on or near railways — 218.2Mbps, well ahead of Salt’s and Sunrise’s statistically tied scores. This is in stark contrast to what’s seen nationally — as all three operators share the 5G Download Speed award in our latest report.
Back in November 2021, Swisscom said that it was “...working with high priority to expand its mobile network across all rail routes.” The operator made headlines in October 2020 by achieving a bandwidth of more than 1.2Gbps on a moving train along a four kilometer long test track between Biberlikopf and Kerenzerberg, using a combination of 4G and 5G.
In Italy, while WindTre leads for 5G Availability nationally in the latest mobile network experience report, Vodafone has the highest score on or near motorways and railways. This means that Vodafone 5G users can benefit more from the superior experience that 5G provides compared to older technologies, boosting the ease at which they can stream videos, play games and allowing the work-focused traveller to be more productive while on the move.
Over in France, our 5G users on SFR and Bouygues see the highest 5G Availability scores both for motorways and railways. Intriguingly, while there is no significant difference between our Swiss users’ 5G Availability on or near motorways across the country’s three operators, there is much more differentiation for railways, with Salt placing first with 5G users utilizing the latest generation network 26.8% of the time.
Joined up thinking
Looking ahead, one factor that will help improve travellers’ mobile experience when moving between EU countries is the EU Commission's support for 5G transport corridors. In December 2024, it approved funding for seven additional projects and these will deploy standalone 5G infrastructure along cross-border corridors of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), such as highways, railways, or maritime paths to ensure “seamless interoperability of national 5G systems”.
One example of a 5G corridor project is 5G Autobahn to Autoroute — which will cover 60km of motorways between the French city of Metz and Saarbrücken in Germany. Construction will begin in early 2025 with completion scheduled for the end of 2027. In addition to improving 5G connectivity, it will also aid the development of new services including:
- Cooperative lane changing (to prevent two cars from moving into the same lane from different directions)
- Collision anticipation and prevention
- Automatic traffic jam alerts
- The testing of (partially) autonomous vehicles.
While Switzerland can’t directly benefit from such projects as it is not an EU member state, Swiss mobile users can look forward to Sunrise’s upcoming launch of 5G standalone access (SA) technology later this year across its entire 5G network, which the operator says will lead to improved 5G connections indoors, more stable voice calls, along with more efficient smartphone battery usage. In addition, SA’s network slicing capabilities could be used to improve the mobile experience for first responders, in a manner similar to T-Mobile USA’s T-Priority service.
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