State of Mobile Networks: Australia (November 2018)

In Australia, 4G reach and mobile broadband speeds have always been high, but they both continue to grow, achieving new heights. In our most current analysis, Australia's operators hit two new milestones. We saw our first operator surpass the 90% 4G availability mark, while another operator became the first to exceed 40 Mbps speeds in download connections in our measurements.

In our fourth report on the Australian mobile market, OpenSignal analyzed nearly 426 million measurements, collected from 31,735 devices between July 1 and Sept. 28, 2018. We compared the 3G and 4G metrics of Australia's three national operators: Singtel's Optus, Telstra and Vodafone Australia. We also delved deep into our regional data to analyze our metrics in five of Australia's biggest cities. Let's start first with our speed metrics.

A new king of speed emerges

Australia has always had a reputation for building powerful networks, and one network in particular began to rear its head in our latest analysis. Telstra jumped into the lead in our 4G download speed metric. It won our award with an average download of 40.1 Mbps, making it the first operator to cross over the 40-Mbps threshold in our Australia analysis. In our last report, Vodafone came within a hair's breadth of hitting the 40-Mbps mark itself, but rather than make the final push over the line in this test period, Vodafone's average 4G download speed dropped slightly in our measurements. Both Vodafone and Optus, however, can still claim incredibly fast LTE connections as our results show both averaged 4G download speeds just under 38 Mbps.

In 4G upload speed, Telstra didn't face much competition. Its average upload connection of 10.8 Mbps was at least 24% faster than its competitors’ in our analysis. Optus, however, pulled off a coup in 3G download, moving past Vodafone to win our award with an average HSPA connection speed of 7.1 Mbps.

Optus's biggest win came in our 4G availability category. It climbed to the top of our rankings in 4G availability in our latest analysis, surpassing Vodafone with a score of 90.5%. That means our users were able to find an LTE signal on Optus' networks in nine out of every 10 attempts. Optus became the first operator in Australia to exceed 90% 4G availability in our results, but its two competitors were hot on its heels. Telstra and Vodafone both had 4G availability scores over 88% in our measurements.

That brings us to our overall download speed metric, which factors in 3G and 4G download speeds and the availability of each technology. Optus's gains in both 4G download speed and 4G availability led to a significant increase in its overall score, bringing it to 33.8 Mbps. Meanwhile the drop we recorded in previous winner Vodafone's 4G download speed resulted in a decline of over 1 Mbps in overall speed to 33 Mbps — and the loss of its lead in the category. Telstra emerged as the winner in our tests with an impressive average overall download score of 35.1 Mbps, largely due to its uptick in 4G speed.

In latency, Vodafone emerged as the winner of our 4G category. Latency measures the response time of a network, and a lower latency score means that web content will begin loading quicker and real-time communications apps will experience less lag time. Vodafone had a superb LTE latency score of 30 milliseconds, allowing it to hold onto its award since our last report. But Optus is closing the gap with Vodafone in this metric. Our results show that Optus's response time improved by 2ms in the last six months, and in our most recent analysis Optus was within a millisecond of matching Vodafone. In 3G latency, we had a tie between Optus and Vodafone, both of which had scores just above 60ms.

Telstra's speed dominance extends to the cities

Telstra's national wins in 4G speed and overall speed were reflected in its results in several of Australia's big cities, but it did face some competition in a few urban areas. In Melbourne, Vodafone won our 4G download speed award, and in Adelaide Optus and Telstra shared the same prize. Telstra and Vodafone were tied for the awards in overall download speed in Melbourne and 4G upload speed in Perth. However Telstra grabbed every other speed award in the five cities. Its 4G download win in Sydney was particularly impressive as its average connection reached nearly 47 Mbps in our measurements.

4G availability was a much more contested metric on the regional level. Though Optus was our national winner in this metric, Telstra and Vodafone put up a much bigger fight in Australia's biggest cities. Telstra won our our 4G availability award outright in Sydney, but in the other four cities we recorded two-or three-way draws between the operators.

The mobile broadband future of Australia looks bright. It will only be a matter of time before Australia's other operators pass the 90% 4G availability and 40 Mbps 4G download speed marks, so the country will be one to watch in our coming reports.