Switzerland

Swisscom was the only operator to show any improvement in its 4G Availability score — enough to push it into a tie with Sunrise, who won this award in our last report. Our Swisscom users saw their 4G Availability improve by nearly 3 percentage points, while those on Salt and Sunrise saw statistically no change in their scores. Both Sunrise and Swisscom now have scores above the 93% mark, while Salt is within 2 percentage points of the 90% mark, meaning with a little push, we should see our users on all three of Switzerland's operators enjoying over 90% 4G Availability in the next year.

Switzerland's high 4G Availability scores are particularly impressive, given the topographical challenges the operators face in this mountainous region. Opensignal recently analyzed the proportion of time our Swiss users could access mobile services on 4G networks and found that users on average could connect to 4G services more than 85% of the time across all geographical regions. Our 4G users in the Swiss Plateau and Alpine Valley regions spent more than 90% of their time connected to 4G networks, while our users in the Alpine Mountain and Jura regions had slightly lower 4G Availability scores around the 88% mark. Our data shows there is no large divide in mobile experience across the geographical regions, suggesting that the majority of Swiss users will benefit from the ongoing 5G network rollout, regardless of where they live in the mountainous landscape.

We saw improvements in Video Experience for all our Swiss users. But the biggest jump in our scores was from Swisscom, which improved over 6 points (out of 100) to pull ahead of Sunrise, following a tie between the two in the metric six months ago. Our users on both Salt and Sunrise saw increases in their scores, but Salt's growth was slightly higher, allowing the operator to force a tie for second place.

Swisscom's sprint saw it pass the 75-point mark in Video Experience — meaning it now has an Excellent rating (75-100). This means its users enjoy a very consistent experience across all video streaming providers and resolutions, with fast loading times and almost non-existent stalling. This is only the second time we have seen an Excellent rating in one of our country reports — only Vodafone in the Netherlands has managed it so far — and Switzerland's other two operators are both within 3 points of this mark, reflecting the highly advanced status of mobile networks in the country.

It was an incredibly tight race for our first-ever Voice App Experience award in Switzerland: The prize was shared by Salt and Swisscom, with less than 2 points (out of 100) separating all three operators. This unique, first-of-its-kind metric measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger — using a model derived from the International Telecommunication Union for quantifying overall voice call quality with a series of calibrated technical parameters.

All three of Switzerland's operators scored in the 80-87 bracket (out of 100) in Voice App Experience, meaning they all achieved Good ratings. This means our users are largely satisfied with voice app calls, although some experience minor quality impairments, such as a hazy background, low volume, and very occasional clicking sounds or distortion. While there is clearly room for improvement, Switzerland enjoys a good Voice App Experience, coming in the top 10 of our global chart in our recent report.

Swisscom has dominated our speed metrics for some years now. But the operator has really put the pedal to the metal in this report, putting some serious distance between itself and its rivals. In Download Speed Experience, our Swisscom users saw their average speed by 9 Mbps — a jump of over 20% since our last report — moving the operator to within 1 Mbps of the 50 Mbps milestone.

This acceleration means our Swisscom users' Download Speed Experience is now nearly 13 Mbps ahead of its nearest rival Sunrise, and over 15 Mbps faster than Salt. And in our 4G-only Download Speed measurements, Swisscom has smashed through the 50 Mbps marker, with a score of 52.4 Mbps — close to 14 Mbps ahead of the pack.

In order to understand Swisscom user’s radically superior download speeds, we recently analyzed the spectrum holdings of the country's operators. We found that all three players utilized a range of bands, from 800 MHz to 2600 MHz, allowing them to offer a pretty good mobile network experience across the board. But the game-changer for Swisscom appears to be in the higher bands (2100 MHz and 2600 MHz), where we saw significantly higher numbers of 4G cells on their network compared to their rivals. These higher bands are ideal for covering urban areas with high speed, high-capacity networks, which has given Swisscom the edge over its rivals in our speed metrics.

Swisscom's speed leap was even more impressive in Upload Speed Experience, as it saw its score jump by 6.6 Mbps — a massive increase of over 62% — to leapfrog both its rivals and grab our award. Our users on both Sunrise and Salt also saw decent increases in their scores — of 8% and 16% respectively, to tie for second place — but Swisscom is now over 4 Mbps faster than either of its rivals.

Our Swisscom users also saw the greatest increase in their 4G Upload Speeds, of close to 7 Mbps to reach a very impressive 18.5 Mbps and spring into the lead. But while second-placed Salt also saw a fair increase in the 4G Upload Speed our users enjoy to stay within 4 Mbps of the leader, Sunrise saw statistically no improvement in its score in the past six months, seeing it drift into third place and further behind the pack.

Swisscom kept hold of our Latency Experience award, with a slight improvement to its score in the past six months to bring our users’ experience tantalizingly close to the 30 millisecond milestone. But it was our Salt users who saw the greatest improvement of nearly 5ms, allowing the operator to move past Sunrise into second place.

Salt saw a similar improvement in its 4G Latency score, allowing it to move ahead of both its rivals in our measurements. Indeed, it may now only be Salt's inferior 3G Latency and 4G Availability scores that are preventing the operator from taking our overall Latency Experience award. And things aren't so good for Swisscom in 4G Latency, as our users statistically haven't seen any improvement in their network speeds for the past year.