Australia

4G Availability among Australia’s operators continues to grow. Vodafone closed the gap with Optus and is tied for first place. Optus had a score of 93.2% while Vodafone had a score of 93.1%. Testra also crossed the 90% threshold for the first time with a 91.1% score up from 89.4% in our last report.

4G Availability is strong in Australia, which is a mature market with extensive LTE adoption. It’s notable that these three national operators are still improving their 4G Availability even as two of them are deploying 5G in some cities. Telstra’s 4G Availability will likely continue to increase because the operator just announced it will be sunsetting its 3G network and will boost its 4G coverage to match its 3G network as it prepares for that shutdown.

Opensignal recently compared the wireless experience of rural and urban users in Australia. In cities, our users experienced very similar levels of 4G Availability on all three networks. However, outside the cities, the time users spend connected to 4G falls markedly, particularly more so for Vodafone users than for Telstra or Optus.

When it comes to delivering video over a smartphone, the operators in Australia provided a strong experience for all our users. In fact, there was a three-way tie in this category with all operators earning Very Good scores (65-75) on our 100-point Video Experience scale. This metric quantifies the quality of video streamed to a mobile device over 3G and 4G networks. A Very Good rating indicates that loading times are generally fast with only occasional stalling. The experience might be somewhat inconsistent across users or with different video providers or differing resolutions.

The three Australian operators’ scores were very close, with Telstra achieving a 70.4 rating, Optus hitting a 70.2 score and Vodafone coming in only slightly lower with a 70.1 rating. Since our last report, Optus increased its score by 3.9% from 67.6 to 70.2 making it the most improved.

It is notable that when we break out the 4G Video Experience in Australia, Telstra achieves a 73.6 rating on the 100-point scale — meaning it's a little more than one point away from earning an Excellent Video Experience rating. Only a few operators globally have achieved an Excellent Video Experience rating.

The Australian operators, however, didn’t fare quite as well with their 3G Video Experience ratings. All three earned Fair ratings (40-55) on our 100-point scale. It should be noted that delivering quality video on a 3G connection is a challenge. Vodafone scored a 46.7, which is a 7% decline from its score of 50.2 points in our previous report. Both Optus and Telstra saw their scores increase from the prior report.

The use of voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger is becoming more popular thanks to ubiquitous mobile broadband. These apps offer a new way for users to talk to each other and Opensignal is now measuring the quality of our users’ experience on these apps.

In Opensignal’s inaugural Voice App Experience analysis in Australia, Telstra is the winner with a score of 81.3 on a 100-point scale. That puts Telstra in the Good category (80-87), which means most users on its network were satisfied with the voice app experience but some users might have experienced minor quality problems such as background noise, clicking or other distortion.

Optus landed in second place with a score of 80.6, also ranking in the Good category. Vodafone scored a 79.3 rating, which falls into the Acceptable category (74-80). An Acceptable ranking means that users were satisfied but some users may have experienced perceptible call quality issues such as short durations of clicking or distortion, or the sound may not have been loud enough. Nevertheless, listeners were generally able to comprehend the conversation.

No Australian operator fell below an Acceptable rating, which is explained by the high degree of 4G Availability from the Australian operators.

In addition to the Voice App Experience metric, Opensignal also reported on two supporting measurements related to the voice app — the 4G Voice App Experience and the 3G Voice App Experience.

The 4G Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for Opensignal users on an operator’s LTE connection. The 3G Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for Opensignal users on an operator’s 3G network.

In the 4G Voice App Experience Telstra earned an 82.3 and Optus scored an 81.6 on a scale of 1-100, giving them both a Good rating (80-87). Vodafone also achieved a Good rating with a score of 80.6. Not surprisingly, all three operators’ rankings dropped in the 3G Voice App Experience category. Telstra ranked first with a score of 72.9, followed by Optus with 70.7 and Vodafone on 67.1 — putting all three operator's 3G scores in the Poor category (66-74). A Poor ranking means that many users were dissatisfied because of call quality problems such as distortion, clicking sounds or silence.

In our latest Download Speed Experience analysis, two of Australia’s operators clocked speeds in excess of 40 Mbps. Telstra was the winner of our Download Speed Experience award with our users on average experiencing download speeds of 44.5 Mbps. Optus was the second place winner with users’ speeds of 41.6 Mbps and Vodafone came in third with 37.2 Mbps.

When evaluating Australia’s 4G Download Speeds exclusively, our users on all three operators broke the 40 Mbps barrier for average speeds. Telstra was in the lead with 49.1 Mbps. Optus was in second place with 45.1 Mbps followed by Vodafone with 40.8 Mbps.

Telstra once again won our Upload Speed Experience award with a score of 10.2 Mbps, followed by Vodafone with our users seeing speeds of 8.9 Mbps and Optus with 8.4 Mbps.

Interestingly, when we break down 3G versus 4G connections, we find our users on Telstra topping 11.2 Mbps in the 4G Upload Speeds they experience, while users on Vodafone had 9.8 Mbps in 4G Upload Speeds and Optus had 9.1 Mbps in 4G Upload Speeds. Our users when connecting on 3G networks from Telstra and Optus saw upload speeds of a respectable 1 Mbps while Vodafone users saw upload speeds of 1.3 Mbps.

Latency is the one measurement in the world of mobile networks where low numbers are more desirable than high ones. Latency is the delay that happens when data is flowing over a network. Networks with small delays appear as having low latency. Networks with a lot of delays will have high latency. Smartphone users will have a better experience on low latency networks because that means that real-time communications apps will feel instantaneous, webpages will load more quickly, and mobile gaming experiences will be more fluid.

Opensignal users on all three of Australia’s networks enjoyed relatively low latency experiences but Optus stands out for users having the lowest latency of 30.7 milliseconds, and is the winner of our Latency Experience award. Vodafone is second with 31.6ms experienced by our users and Telstra is third with 41.6ms.

Opensignal also breaks out latency by network technology. In 4G Latency, users on Vodafone had a latency of 29.3ms and users on Optus had a latency of 28.8ms, which is considered a good experience in 4G networks. In 3G Latency we see a score of 49.8ms for our users on Optus and 51.4ms for those on Vodafone.

We don’t expect to see dramatic improvements in network latency until 5G networks are fully deployed. With 5G, the industry is aiming to improve network latency to just single-digits.