State of Mobile Networks: Brazil (August 2015)

The 2014 World Cup was a trial by fire for Brazil’s fledgling 4G networks, and there were plenty of complaints levied against the country’s operators about the quality and consistency of their service during the month long sporting extravaganza. Brazilian operators, however, are getting a second chance – and two more years to prepare – to prove the mettle of their mobile data networks in next year’s Rio Olympics.

As the 2016 Summer Olympics’ official sponsor, Claro has the most to gain or lose in this global showcase, but according to OpenSignal’s research it’s also the most prepared. The third largest operator won the highest ranks in four out of five categories, measuring LTE and 3G speeds and availability (*) and overall network availability. But in almost every case, the country’s largest service provider, Telefónica’s Vivo, was on Claro’s heels.

Brazil’s main LTE rollout didn’t get underway until 2013, but its operators have considerable 4G progress in the intervening two years. LTE speeds well exceed the global average of 11.7 Mbps, and even in the short two-month time window of this study, we saw LTE performance noticeably improve on three of the top four operators’ networks. Of course, this is a trend we often see when new 4G networks come online. Right now Brazil’s LTE service isn’t heavily loaded. As operators sign up more 4G subscriptions and their networks become more congested, those speeds will likely come down.

Right now Brazilian subscribers are getting an LTE signal on about half of all data sessions. That’s nothing to scoff at considering Brazil’s 4G market is still young, but Brazilian operators still have some work to do before LTE comes truly pervasive. That said, Brazil has some decent 3G networks for consumers to fall back on. Only one operator, Nextel, averaged 3G speeds less than 1 Mbps, and three of them were able to supply a 3G or better data signal more than 80 percent of the time. Also, Brazil’s mobile users experienced relatively little time out of range of signal availability compared to other developed countries.

Of course, three months out of a typical Brazilian winter will be nothing compared to three weeks of Olympics festivities. By this time next year, we’ll know just how prepared Brazil’s networks are.

(*) Editor’s note: In June of 2016, OpenSignal changed the name of its availability metric to network availability. Availability measures the same thing as availability — the proportion of time users remain connected to a particular network — but we felt that availability was a better reflection of the metric’s definition. For more details see our methodology page.