Peru

Both Claro and Movistar have made good progress since our last report with our users reporting improved scores for both operators. However, Movistar’s surge was the greater of the two, up almost 10 points, propelling it to first place. As a consequence, its users now enjoy a Good Video Experience (up from Fair). This means that like their Claro counterparts, Movistar users typically have a less than consistent experience, particularly for higher resolutions, with noticeably slower loading times and stalling not being uncommon.

Looking at the supporting metrics, it is interesting to observe the strong showing from Movistar, with our users reporting a score of 43.1 for 3G Video Experience, 6.5 points above that seen with Claro, which came second for this metric. In addition, Movistar’s 3G and 4G Video Experience scores have increased by 9.6 and 10.6 points since our last report.

While Bitel users saw a modest improvement of 2.3 points in Video Experience, this was far below that needed to move the operator to third place, with Entel users still observing a score slightly above 50.

Our first look at Voice App Experience in Peru reveals a remarkably level playing field, with only 1.4 points separating the best and worst performers. These results indicate that our Peruvian users are having a Poor Voice App Experience on all four networks — which means that many users are dissatisfied and are experiencing call quality impairments, such as distortion or clicking sounds.

Movistar and Entel are statistically tied for first place and with so little separating all four operators, it won’t take much for one of them to claim the award for Video Experience outright in our next report.

Looking at the supporting metrics, it’s worth noting Bitel’s comparatively strong showing for 3G Voice App Experience; our users observed a score of 65.9, well ahead of its rivals.

Download speeds have stagnated since our last report, with our users observing declines across three networks. This was particularly marked for our Entel users, who observed a drop of 2.9 Mbps. While Movistar users also experienced a drop in Download Speed Experience, it was less severe and as a result, Entel has gone from being the clear award winner for this category to being statistically tied with Movistar for first place. This was made possible by the strong showing Movistar made in our last report, in which our users saw its score grow by more than 4 Mbps.

Despite being the only operator on which our users saw an increase in Download Speed Experience since our last report, Bitel still trails its peers in this regard, with around 11.4 Mbps separating it from the front-runners. Part of the issue appears to be one of spectrum. While Bitel announced plans to invest $110 million to roll out 2600 MHz across its network back in May 2018 our 4G users observed only limited use of that band. Information that Bitel supplied under the requirements set by the country’s Wireless Coverage Regulation states that it has some 4G base stations operating in 2.6 GHz (in some provinces outside those of Lima and Callao) and according to OSIPTEL, most of Bitel’s 4G infrastructure is deployed in the 900 MHz band. While this remains the case, the potential uplift in the speeds observed by the operator’s users will likely remain low because of the capacity available on this band. The operator will be further constrained by the fact that its licence for the 2600 MHz band is not a national one.

In contrast to the drops in performance our users observed for Download Speed Experience, Upload Speed Experience scores increased for all four operators when compared with those from our last report. Movistar users observed the biggest gain (0.9 Mbps), but this wasn’t sufficient to knock Entel off the top spot, despite our users on its network observing a more modest 0.2 Mbps improvement. Claro’s score rose by 0.6 Mbps, but the gap between it and the operator in second place (Movistar) has grown by 0.3 Mbps to 2.6 Mbps

Turning to Bitel, the performance seen by our users is line with that for Download Speed Experience, with the operator trailing behind its peers. The 1.9 Mbps seen by our users on its network for Upload Speed Experience is below one fifth of the 10 Mbps seen with front-runner Entel and less than one third of the 6.2 Mbps seen for Claro, which is second to last place for Upload Speed Experience. However, in percentage terms, Bitel did see a significant improvement, up nearly 36% from our last report, but it clearly still has a long way before it can offer speeds in line with its competitors.

While for the second report in a row, 4G Availability scores saw little in the way of change, there was sufficient movement to create a new pair of operators that are statistically tied for first place; Entel has stayed put, while Claro has replaced Movistar. This change occurred due to both our Claro users spending more time connected on 4G, while their Movistar counterparts saw a drop of 1.7 percentage points since our last report. Peru now has two operators with 4G Availability scores of 85% or higher.

In addition, Bitel’s users saw it break past the 80% mark for the first time. Once more the gap between all four operators remains tight, with just over 5 percentage points separating them. Given this, a strong showing by any operator could allow them to win the prize in our next report.