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In a surprising turn of events, Ooredoo managed to snatch four awards from Vodafone, breaking the tie for 4G Availability and securing Qatar’s first award for Voice App Experience. This show of strength cements Ooredoo as a fierce competitor, and was made possible through its 14% increase in Download Speed Experience since May, among other smaller improvements in Upload and Video Experience. However, this turn of events was also influenced by Vodafone’s observed drop in several of our metrics.
Our new metric, which measures the quality of consumers’ experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services using apps like WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger on mobile networks, shows Ooredoo coming ahead of Vodafone by 3.4 points, while both achieved an Acceptable ranking. Oftentimes 3G and 4G experiences differ greatly, but in this case scores were relatively close. In fact, our users on Ooredoo experienced a score only 3.3 points lower when connected to 3G versus 4G, meaning that even 3G users are able to get an Acceptable call quality. Meanwhile, at a 7 point difference between 3G and 4G Voice App Experience, our 3G users on Vodafone experienced a Poor call quality, where impairments such as distortion, clicking sounds or silence are a common occurrence. The Voice App Experience of Qatari users recently became all the more significant since the WhatsApp ban was lifted.
Our Qatari users on Vodafone saw their experience decrease slightly in four of our awards: 4G Availability, Download, Upload, and Video Experience. The Vodafone brand delivered some impressive profits since exiting Qatar in 2018, but perhaps at the cost of user experience, where cost-cutting might have directly or indirectly affected the experience of our users on their network. Regardless of the cause, the impact was enough to bounce Vodafone from a Very Good Video Experience to just Good, and its 4G Availability to be nudged below the 85% mark.
As a consolation for its narrow misses in 4G Availability, Voice App and Video Experience, Vodafone can at the very least be thrilled with the Latency Experience that our users were able to receive on its network. An overall Latency Experience of 28.7 milliseconds places our Qatari Vodafone users in the same league as our users on Singapore’s lowest latency operators. And, at an impressive 32.7ms, 3G users on Vodafone experienced better latencies than the average overall (3G & 4G) latencies experienced in London, even when compared to the operators with the lowest average latency. Compared to Ooredoo’s 45.3ms overall latency, or its 53.8ms 3G latency, our users on Vodafone experienced far shorter delays in data transmission.
Our second report on Qatar’s mobile market shows just how dynamic and rapidly changing the telecoms industry can be, with Ooredoo now claiming 5 of our 6 awards, from being behind in most of them just six months ago. Vodafone scored a win in our Latency Experience metric, with a score over a third faster than its rival. However, all other awards, including our first Qatar Voice App Experience Award, were snatched by Ooredoo, who improved their scores in multiple metrics since May.
| Mobile Experience Awards Qatar | ||
|---|---|---|
November 2019,
Qatar Report
|
O
Ooredoo
|
V
Vodafone
|
4G Availability
| ||
Video Experience
| ||
Voice App Experience
| ||
Download Speed Experience
| ||
Upload Speed Experience
| ||
Latency Experience
| ||
|
Mobile Experience Awards Winners
|
November 2019,
Qatar
|
|---|---|
|
4G Availability
|
O
Ooredoo
|
|
Video Experience
|
O
Ooredoo
|
|
Voice App Experience
|
O
Ooredoo
|
|
Download Speed Experience
|
O
Ooredoo
|
|
Upload Speed Experience
|
O
Ooredoo
|
|
Latency Experience
|
V
Vodafone
|
|
Video Experience
Additional Metrics |
O
Ooredoo
|
V
Vodafone
|
|---|---|---|
| in 0-100 points | ||
|
4G Video Experience
| 69.4 (± 1.01) | 68.8 (± 1.09) |
|
3G Video Experience
| 55.3 (± 3.54) | 50.4 (± 3.82) |
| 4G Video Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
69 (± 1.01) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
69 (± 1.09) |
| 3G Video Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
55 (± 3.54) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
50 (± 3.82) |
|
Voice App Experience
Additional Metrics |
O
Ooredoo
|
V
Vodafone
|
|---|---|---|
| in 0-100 points | ||
|
4G Voice App Experience
| 79.9 (± 0.94) | 77.5 (± 1.47) |
|
3G Voice App Experience
| 76.6 (± 3.29) | 70.5 (± 4.68) |
| 4G Voice App Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
80 (± 0.94) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
78 (± 1.47) |
| 3G Voice App Experience | in 0-100 points |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
77 (± 3.29) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
70 (± 4.68) |
|
Download Speed Experience
Additional Metrics |
O
Ooredoo
|
V
Vodafone
|
|---|---|---|
| in Mbps | ||
|
4G Download Speed
| 32.5 (± 0.94) | 29.1 (± 1.08) |
|
3G Download Speed
| 8.3 (± 0.46) | 8.2 (± 0.50) |
| 4G Download Speed | in Mbps |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
33 (± 0.94) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
29 (± 1.08) |
| 3G Download Speed | in Mbps |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
8 (± 0.46) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
8 (± 0.50) |
|
Upload Speed Experience
Additional Metrics |
O
Ooredoo
|
V
Vodafone
|
|---|---|---|
| in Mbps | ||
|
4G Upload Speed
| 10.7 (± 0.31) | 9.8 (± 0.42) |
|
3G Upload Speed
| 1.7 (± 0.13) | 1.2 (± 0.13) |
| 4G Upload Speed | in Mbps |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
11 (± 0.31) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
10 (± 0.42) |
| 3G Upload Speed | in Mbps |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
2 (± 0.13) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
1 (± 0.13) |
|
Latency Experience
Additional Metrics |
O
Ooredoo
|
V
Vodafone
|
|---|---|---|
| in ms | ||
|
4G Latency
| 42.9 (± 1.55) | 27.4 (± 0.33) |
|
3G Latency
| 53.8 (± 4.00) | 32.7 (± 1.38) |
| 4G Latency | in ms |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
43 (± 1.55) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
27 (± 0.33) |
| 3G Latency | in ms |
|
O
Ooredoo
|
54 (± 4.00) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
33 (± 1.38) |
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