State of Mobile Networks: Colombia (July 2017)

To say mobile communications is an important part of current developments and growth in the Colombian economy – the fourth largest in Latin America - would be an understatement. According to the GSM Association (GSMA) in its most recent overview on the country, the equivalent of 3.8% of GDP was generated in 2016 by mobile technologies and services, totalling around US$10 billion. The GSMA projects this figure could grow to US$13 billion and 4.2% of GDP by end 2020.

These financials are likely testimony to the continuing efforts and impacts of the ongoing Colombian Government’s Vive Digital plan and makes this an ideal time for our first State of Mobile Networks: Colombia report. We’ve focused on the leading three operators: América Móvil’s Claro, Telefónica's Movistar and Millicom’s Tigo. Over the 3-month period between Feb 28 to May 30 this year, OpenSignal took 134 million measurements from 9,165 smartphones using our OpenSignal app and analyzed six metrics: 4G service availability, download speeds (4G, 3G and overall), as well as 3G and 4G latency.

Test results in detail

Taking 4G availability first, our data showed Movistar and Tigo to be neck and neck in a statistical tie for first place, with users on both networks able to avail of 4G services between 62.2% and 62.3% of the time. Second place Claro scored just above 56% in 4G availability. According to our most recent State of LTE report, 50 countries had overall 4G availability scores higher than 63%, so all of Colombia’s operators clearly have some work to do. But these improvements are likely only a matter of time away, as the government forges ahead with its Vive Digital efforts.

In our 4G download speed category, our data showed Claro and Movistar had only 2 Mbps separating them, Claro offering download speeds of 19.1 Mbps and Movistar providing users average connections of 21.1Mbps, making it a statistical tie for first place. We measured average 4G download speeds on Tigo at 17.2Mbps, but all three operators beat the global 4G download average of 16.2 Mbps, measured in our LTE report.

As for 3G, well, with little to separate the download speeds of our three operators, Claro, Movistar and Tigo, we declared all three winners in another statistical tie. Our results showed that users on these three networks experience 2.8 Mbps, 3.0 Mbps and 3.1 Mbps download speeds, respectively.

Our third speed category looked at overall download connection speeds, which along with 3G and 4G download speeds also takes network availability into account. In our measurements, Movistar was the clear winner in this metric with its users experiencing an average download of 9.8 Mbps, while Claro and Tigo averaged overall download speeds of 7.7 Mbps and 8.2 Mbps, respectively.

Lastly, we looked at network latency, which measures the delay, in milliseconds, that data experiences on its end-to-end journey through the network. In both 3G and 4G categories Tigo took the top prize. Its measured 3G latency of 104ms was some 13ms ahead of rival Movistar and way ahead of Claro’s rather poor 193ms. For 4G, our Tigo users had an excellent experience with latency of only 43.4ms, 20ms ahead of Movistar and 110ms ahead of Claro.

Colombia – Steadily Catching Up

With its Vive Digital program driving change in the country, there is every likelihood that Colombia will improve its position in mobile communications world rankings in the coming years, though at the moment it still ranks at the low end of our global results. In OpenSignal’s State of LTE report, Colombia’s 4G availability places it in the lower third of countries we track, although the country as a whole performed better in our 4G-download-speed results.

According to the GSMA, Colombia’s mobile operators incentivized by the government’s digital agenda, are reported to have invested US$9 billion in network improvements and spectrum since 2010. A further US$5 billion of capital investment by the operators is predicted over the next three years, which will lead to increased coverage and capacity. In fact, Claro actually announced its LTE expansion plans late last year, with the aim to reach 100% nationwide LTE coverage by 2018, less than five years since it launched its 4G network. It also expressed its intentions to roll out LTE-Advanced and 5G technologies to meet growing user demand for faster mobile broadband speeds.

Colombia’s adoption of mobile broadband still lags behind others in the region, but mobile broadband connections are forecast to rise to 69% by 2020, at which time 67% of all mobile connections in the country are expected to be using smartphones. The country’s regulating authorities announced they would be releasing new spectrum imminently and increasing existing spectrum caps, all of which will increase 4G capacity for users in both urban and remote regions.

All in all, with the Colombian Government’s continued support for digital inclusion, together with the predicted continuing operator investment in their networks, OpenSignal sees the story unfolding in Colombia as a positive one.