Mexico

Telcel is still the leader when it comes to Video Experience. The operator’s score increased 11.4% over our last report, when it had a score of 63.8, to reach a score of 71 (on a scale of 0-100), which puts it in the Very Good category. A Very Good rating means that users experience generally fast loading times with only occasional stalling. Movistar, meanwhile, saw its Video Experience score increase to 58.2, which is 8.9 points higher than the 49.3 score we reported back in October 2019. AT&T tied with Movistar with a score of 58.2, putting both of those operators into the Good category. That means users had a less consistent experience with noticeably slower loading times and some stalling.

When we look at video user experience on just the 4G network, the difference is more dramatic. Telcel’s 4G-only Video Experience score is 77.6 (on a scale of 0-100) which is 6.7 points higher than its overall score and that puts it into the Excellent category for video performance, which means users have a very consistent experience with fast loading times and almost non-existent stalling. Movistar’s 4G-only Video Experience is 14.4 points better than its overall score of 58.2 giving it a score of 72.6. That moves it into the Very Good category, which means the video experience for users is generally good with fast loading times and only occasional stalling. AT&T, meanwhile has a 4G-only Video Experience score of 60.7, which is just 2.5 points higher than its overall score of 58.2 and keeps it in the Good category.

Opensignal measured the gaming experience in Mexico for the first time and we learned that playing multiplayer games in Mexico is a bit challenging. Telcel won our first award with a score of 68.8 on a scale of 0-100, which falls into the Fair Category. This means users found the experience to be ‘average’ meaning that the game is responsive but the majority of users experience noticeable delays between their actions and the outcomes in the game. AT&T came in second with a score of 64.1 and Movistar had a score of 54.6. Both AT&T and Movistar scored in the Poor category, which means that most users found gameplay to be unacceptable with almost all users experiencing delays between their gameplay and the outcome of the games.

Opensignal’s newly released Games Experience metric measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network. The metric is measured on a scale of 0-100 and looks at how the user experience is impacted by network conditions such as latency, packet loss and jitter.

This approach was developed from several years of research looking at the relationship between the technical network parameters and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users. These parameters include latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (the proportion of data packets that never reach their destination). Additionally, it considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions. The games tested include some of the most popular real-time multiplayer mobile games — such as Fortnite, Pro Evolution Soccer and Arena of Valor — played around the world.

Voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger are 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.

Telcel once again won our Voice App Experience award with a score of 77 on a scale of 0-100, which means that it is still in the Acceptable category. AT&T came in second place with a score of 75.5, which moves it from Poor and into the Acceptable category. Movistar, with a score of 72.1, still falls into the Poor category, meaning users were dissatisfied with the experience.

In addition to the Voice App Experience metric, Opensignal also reported on the 4G Voice App Experience, which measures the quality of experience for Opensignal users on an operator’s LTE connection.

In 4G Voice App Experience Telcel earned a score of 79, AT&T scored a 77.5 and Movistar scored 76.5. All three of these scores fall into the Acceptable category (74-80) on a scale of 0-100, which means users are satisfied but may experience perceptible call quality impairments with some clicking sounds or distortion.

Telcel won this category with our users experiencing an overall download speed of 23.1 Mbps. This is a 13.2% increase over the 20.4 Mbps speed that we reported in our October 2019 report. It was also 9 Mbps faster than our users on rival Movistar’s network that reported a download speed of 14.1 Mbps and 10.9 Mbps faster than our users on AT&T’s network who reported download speeds of 12.2 Mbps.

When we look at Download Speed Experience by technology type, Telcel maintained its lead in 4G Download Speed with a score of 28 Mbps. Movistar and AT&T’s 4G Download Speeds clocked in at 20 Mbps and 13.6 Mbps, respectively.

Telcel also dominates in Upload Speed Experience. Our users on Telcel’s network on average achieved upload speeds of 10.5 Mbps, which puts Telcel in first place. This is a 21.4% increase from our last report when we clocked Telcel upload speeds at 8.7 Mbps. AT&T came in second place with an upload speed of 7.2 Mbps, which is an increase of 6.1% from the 6.8 Mbps we recorded in our October 2019 report. Meanwhile, Movistar came in last with our users clocking an upload speed of 5.6 Mbps, an increase of 13.6% from 4.9 Mbps in our October report. AT&T and Movistar are still below the 10 Mbps speeds we see in most developed markets.

When we break down 3G versus 4G connections, we find our users on Telcel averaged 13 Mbps in the 4G Upload Speeds they experience, which is still significantly faster than our users on AT&T, which experienced speeds of 8.2 Mbps and Movistar, which experienced 4G Upload Speeds of 8.1 Mbps.

Since our last report, we saw AT&T’s users’ latency creep up to 71.2ms from 70.4ms in our last report indicating a slight worsening of responsiveness. And Movistar had the same trend with its latency increasing from 64.7ms to 68.8ms in this report. Telcel was the only operator to improve latency in the six-month period with a score of 56.9ms, an improvement of 2.1ms from our October 2019 report.

Likewise, in the 4G Latency score we see all three operators’ latency scores increasing, or slowing, rather than decreasing. Telcel has a score of 52.3ms up slightly from 52.1ms in October. And Movistar saw the most increase from 52.2ms in October to 58.9ms in this latest report. Latency is an increasingly important metric, particularly when it comes to gaming because lower latency scores mean less lag time when using real-time applications.

AT&T won first place in our 4G Availability metric with a score of 90%, which means that our 4G users were able to access a 4G connection on AT&T’s 4G network 90% of the time. Telcel followed closely with a score of 86.1% and Movistar with 79.6%.

All three operators have now passed the 75% mark in 4G Availability and AT&T has finally hit the coveted 90% mark.

Telcel was the winner in Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience with a score of 7.1 on a scale of 1-10. AT&T came in second with a score of 5.6 and Movistar came third with a score of 3.5. This is the first time Opensignal measured our Mexico users’ 4G Coverage Experience. A higher coverage score means our users experienced more 4G Coverage in the locations that are most highly trafficked.

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.