Brazil

Brazil’s Video Experience improved steadily in the last six months. In our previous report only one operator, Claro, achieved a Good Video Experience rating (55-65 on a 100-point scale), but now two more operators, TIM and Vivo, have upgraded their ratings to Good. This means that users on three out of four networks in Brazil now enjoy shorter load times and less frequent interruptions when streaming video on their smartphones.

Claro leads in the Video Experience category with a score of 61.6 points, as TIM and Vivo came toe-to-toe to challenge our winner with 59.8 and 59.3 points. Oi was the only operator to end up in the Fair rating category with a score of 50.2 points.

Over the last few reports, we have observed noteworthy improvements in the quality of Video Experience perceived by our Brazillian users. We recorded an increase of at least 4.5 points on each of the four operators’ networks, with users on TIM experiencing the greatest improvement — the operator’s score grew by 5.5 points in the last six months’.

When we split our Video Experience measurements by technology, we saw an upward trend. In our 4G Video Experience, Claro remained the leader as its average score passed the 70 points milestone, closely followed by Vivo at 69.7 and TIM at 66.4 points, while Oi remained further behind with a score of 60.6 points. Our average 3G Video Experience scores also showed improvements, but remained at least 27 points lower than 4G scores.

In this report, for the very first time Opensignal quantified the quality of consumers’ experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services using apps like WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger over mobile networks in the country. Our Voice App Experience award ranks operators on a scale of 0-100 using a mean opinion score (MOS) model derived from an International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-based approach for quantifying overall voice call quality and a series of calibrated technical parameters.

Claro became Brazil’s first operator to win our Voice App Experience with a score of 79.9 points. This was less than a point shy from earning a Good rating (80-87). On the other hand, TIM and Vivo scored 75.1 and 74.5 points respectively, putting all three operators in the Acceptable rating bracket (74-80). An Acceptable rating means users were satisfied. Typically, they would have experienced some perceptible call quality impairments with a short duration of distortion but were generally able to comprehend without repetition. Oi was the only operator to earn a Poor rating, which means many of our users were dissatisfied and likely experienced significant call quality impairments.

The omnipresent nature of mobile data networks across Latin America has made the use of voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, and Facebook Messenger increasingly popular among smartphone users in Brazil. These apps are changing the way billions of people communicate with each other around the world, and their performance contributes to customers’ overall satisfaction with their network provider.

Once again, Claro won our Download Speed Experience award, as its score grew by more than 1.5 Mbps to surpass the 20 Mbps mark. The operator remained well ahead of its competitors with a score of 21.5 Mbps, which was at least 40% faster than its closest rival Vivo’s score of 15.1 Mbps and more than 70% faster than TIM’s score of 12.4 Mbps. Claro’s score was also almost two-and-a-half times faster than Oi’s score of 8.9 Mbps in our measurements.

When we look at 4G Download Speed measurements, the results are similar. Claro secured the lead as our users saw their average speeds rise above 27 Mbps. Vivo was the only other operator with scores above 20 Mbps, while TIM and Oi’s scores were 15 Mbps or lower. In our 3G Download Speed, TIM and Vivo came close to challenging Claro, but the América Móvil subsidiary remained ahead of the pack with 5.4 Mbps.

Claro maintained its grip on our Upload Speed Experience with a winning score of 7.6, compared to second- and third-placed Vivo and TIM’s scores of 5.4 Mbps and 5.1 Mbps respectively. In the last six months, our users on Claro’s network saw their average speeds rise by 1.2 Mbps, while Vivo and TIM’s scores improved by less than 1 Mbps. In addition, our Oi users saw a very small improvement of less than 0.5 Mbps, as the operator scored 3.3 Mbps, to end up in a distant last place.

While download speeds get the most attention, upload speeds are becoming more important, as consumers’ mobile habits shift away from mere consumption to content creation and content sharing on popular social media platforms, as well as video streaming applications. This shift gives operators with the most powerful upstream connections a distinct competitive edge, which for the time being is held by Claro.

Claro has a claim over the speed metrics, but TIM has the edge with latency measurements. It was a close competition between the two, but TIM emerged as the winner with a Latency Experience score of 57.4 milliseconds, compared to Claro’s score of 58.4ms. Our users on the two leading networks clocked a much shorter ping time compared to users on rival operators. Vivo users experienced an average ping time of 61.4ms and Oi users experienced a latency of more than 65ms. Latency Experience still has a lot of room for improvement before it reaches the sub-40ms levels that we see in many developed markets.

Latency is an often overlooked metric as the benefits of a low latency connection aren't as obvious as fast speeds or wide-ranging availability. But as a measure of a network's response time, latency affects the consumer mobile experience in many subtle ways. Lower latency connections mean better experience on a host of mobile applications and services, from web browsing and Voice-over-IP, to real-time multiplayer gaming.

Brazil’s 4G Availability continues to thrive, benefiting from the 700MHz spectrum infusion. In the last report TIM crushed the 80% milestone, and in six months’ time the operator increased the time its users spend connected on 4G to surpass the 85% mark. TIM won our 4G Availability award with a score of 85.7%. Claro and Vivo came close to the 80% mark, with scores of 77.7% and 77.3% respectively — an improvement of more than 5 percentage points since the last report. Without access to the 700MHz spectrum band, Oi finished in last place. Opensignal’s 4G users could only access Oi’s 4G networks 68.2% of the time. However, Oi was the biggest riser in this category with an improvement of almost 7 percentage points.

TIM won our inaugural 4G Coverage Experience award in Brazil, with a score of 6.2 points (on a scale of 10). Vivo came close to matching our winner, but missed the first place by a tiny fraction. Claro was close behind Vivo at 5.7, while Oi was further behind with a score of less than 5 points.

Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience metric is a measure of how Opensignal’s mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator’s network. Measured on a scale of 0-10, it analyzes the locations where customers of a network operator received a 4G signal relative to the locations visited by Opensignal users of all network operators.