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Netherlands cities offer a truly outstanding mobile Video Experience

The exact origins of the name Eindhoven have somewhat been lost in the annals of history. But the popular theory goes that the city name is derived from a contraction of the regional words “eind” (meaning last) and “hove” (meaning yard or ground). But Eindhoven is very far from last place when it comes to mobile Video Experience.


Here at Opensignal, we analyzed the Netherlands' top five cities based on how video streaming performs on mobile devices. Our first-of-its-kind Video Experience metric measures the quality of video streamed to mobile devices over 3G and 4G networks. It is calculated on a 0-100 point scale, taking into account factors like load time, stalling rate and video resolution.

Eindhoven came top of our table with an outstanding score of 75.1, but all five of the Netherland's cities we analyzed scored over 70 (out-of-100) in our Video Experience measurements — a truly remarkable achievement.

This is reflected in the Netherlands' national average score of 70.7, one of the highest country-level scores we have ever recorded. The national score has also improved by over 4 points since our inaugural State of Mobile Video global analysis in September, when the Netherlands scored 66.6, putting it in the top 10 of the 69 countries we analyzed. We expect to see further improvements in this score in our next report, meaning the future looks very bright for mobile video in the Netherlands.

Eindhoven's top score of 75.1 is outstanding, not just because it topped our Dutch cities table but also because it just tips the city over into our Excellent category. A Video Experience score that falls within the 75-100 range is Excellent, meaning fast load times and practically non-existent stalling at both low and high resolutions. This is a truly special achievement for Eindhoven, as we very rarely see Excellent scores in our analysis.

In our recent Netherlands Mobile Network Experience Report, we broke down Video Experience scores for all four of the national operators, and found they all scored in the Very Good category, meaning fast loading times and only occasional stalling. T-Mobile and Vodafone drew for our Video Experience award, both with scores of 73.1 — less than two percentage points off the Excellent benchmark.

But what primarily distinguishes a Very Good score from an Excellent score is less consistency in the video quality from different video sources and at different resolutions. None of the countries we examined in our global State of Mobile Video report managed an Excellent score. But given the Netherlands has now passed the 70-point milestone, it's a fair bet the country may cross this threshold in the next year or so.

What's your experience of watching video on mobile devices in the Netherlands? Have you observed much of a difference in Video Experience between cities? Let us know your thoughts  on Twitter.