Mobile Network Experience Report Bangladesh July 2020

Bangladesh

Mobile Network Experience Report
July 2020

Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumer mobile experience. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding the true experience consumers receive on wireless networks.

Author
Sam Fenwick Senior Analyst

Key Findings

Bangladesh’s operators have made great strides on 4G Availability

Airtel and Grameenphone have become the first two operators in Bangladesh to exceed the 80% mark for 4G Availability — the proportion of time that our 4G users are connected to 4G services — and both operators have statistically tied for our 4G Availability award. Our Airtel and Robi users have seen their 4G Availability improve by 4.3 and 4.7 percentage points, respectively, and as a result, Robi’s score is just 1.4 percentage points shy of the 80% mark. However, our Banglalink users saw the largest improvement in 4G Availability, which rose by 10.3 percentage points to 75.7%.

Banglalink comes first for mobile gaming, but Bangladesh’s Games Experience has room for improvement

Banglalink is the winner of our first-ever Games Experience award in Bangladesh. The operator scored 38.6 points out of a possible 100 and beat second-placed Airtel by 1.4 points. However, our Banglalink users, along with their counterparts on Bangladesh’s other nationwide mobile networks observed a Very Poor (under 40) Games Experience. This means that nearly all users found this level of experience unacceptable and experienced noticeable delays when playing games over a cellular connection.

Banglalink pushes past 8 Mbps on Download Speed Experience

Banglalink has become the first operator in Bangladesh to have a Download Speed Experience score in excess of 8 Mbps by virtue of a 0.9 Mbps (12.7%) increase in the average download speeds our Banglalink users have observed since our last report. This increase combined with a modest 0.1 Mbps drop in Grameenphone’s score, puts Banglalink in front of the competition by at least 1.1 Mbps.

Users on three networks see their average upload speeds rise by around 20-25%

While Bangladesh’s upload speeds remain modest by international standards, they have risen significantly in percentage terms since our last report from the perspective of our Airtel, Robi and Banglalink users. Banglalink saw its Upload Speed Experience score increase the most in both absolute (0.6 Mbps) and percentage (24.8%) terms — to 2.9 Mbps — and this increase combined with the 0.3 Mbps decline in Grameenphone’s score enabled it to win the Upload Speed Experience award.

Banglalink dominates the mobile network experience in Bangladesh

In stark contrast to our previous — and first — report on Bangladesh in which Grameenphone won and tied for the most awards, this time round, Banglalink has walked away with five awards, in the form of all our experiential awards — Video Experience, Games Experience and Voice App Experience — and both our speed awards — Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience. The only other operator to win an award outright was Grameenphone, which managed to break the three-way statistical tie our users observed in our last report to win the 4G Coverage Experience award outright, and it has again tied with Airtel for our 4G Availability award.

Introduction

In this report we examined the mobile network experience of the four nationwide mobile network operators in Bangladesh — Airtel, Banglalink, Grameenphone and Robi — over a period of 90 days beginning April 1, 2020, to see how they fared.

This is the first time that Opensignal has assessed how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming at the operator-level in Bangladesh. Banglalink is the winner, with a score of 38.6 points out of a possible 100 and a lead of 1.4 points over second-placed Airtel.

Measured on a scale of 0-100, Opensignal’s Games Experience metric quantifies the experience when playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on mobile devices connected to servers located around the world. The approach is built on several years of research quantifying the relationship between 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.

Turning to our other experiential metrics, all four nationwide operators made significant progress on Video Experience, with their scores rising by between 5.4% and 12%, with Banglalink at the high end of this range. On the other hand, progress was much more modest on Voice App Experience and in both measures of the mobile experience, no operator managed to go up a category.

Banglalink’s strong performance across many of our measures of the mobile experience in this report, is much aided by the 10.3 percentage point improvement in its 4G Availability score. Like its peers, the operator’s 4G Download Speed and 4G Upload Speeds are much higher than their 3G counterparts.

The operator still lags behind its rivals in terms of 4G Availability, but commands leads of 2.5 Mbps for 4G Download Speed and 0.8 Mbps for 4G Upload Speed. These compare favourably against its leads of 1.1 Mbps and 0.2 Mbps for overall download and upload speeds, respectively. This indicates that if Banglalink can bridge the gap with the others in the time its users spend connected to 4G — 4G Availability — then it may be able to extend its lead in our overall speed metrics because of the faster speeds users experience when connected to 4G.

Opensignal Awards Table

Mobile Experience Awards Bangladesh
July 2020, Bangladesh Report
Video Experience
Games Experience
Voice App Experience
Download Speed Experience
Upload Speed Experience
4G Availability
4G Coverage Experience
Download Image
Mobile Experience Awards Winners
July 2020, Bangladesh
Video Experience
Games Experience
Voice App Experience
Download Speed Experience
Upload Speed Experience
4G Coverage Experience
Mobile Experience Awards Draws
July 2020, Bangladesh
4G Availability
Download Image

Overview

Click on metric labels below for a quick preview
Video Experience
in 0-100 points
Grameenphone
52.1
Robi
48.1
Banglalink
53.8
Airtel
49.9
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

National Analysis

Video Experience

Video Experience
in 0-100 points
Grameenphone
52.1
Robi
48.1
Banglalink
53.8
Airtel
49.9
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image
Video Experience
Additional Metrics
in 0-100 points
4G Video Experience
60.6 (± 0.59) 54.4 (± 0.65) 65.0 (± 0.96) 54.0 (± 0.79)
3G Video Experience
38.5 (± 1.07) 38.5 (± 0.97) 40.9 (± 1.35) 44.3 (± 1.12)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Video Experience in 0-100 points
61 (± 0.59)
54 (± 0.65)
65 (± 0.96)
54 (± 0.79)
3G Video Experience in 0-100 points
39 (± 1.07)
39 (± 0.97)
41 (± 1.35)
44 (± 1.12)
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Inc.

Games Experience

Games Experience
in 0-100 points
Grameenphone
35.2
Robi
36.2
Banglalink
38.6
Airtel
37.2
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image
Games Experience
Additional Metrics
in 0-100 points
4G Games Experience
37.9 (± 0.09) 38.3 (± 0.12) 52.3 (± 0.66) 38.9 (± 0.13)
3G Games Experience
30.8 (± 0.14) 33.0 (± 0.22) 34.8 (± 0.20) 34.8 (± 0.22)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Games Experience in 0-100 points
38 (± 0.09)
38 (± 0.12)
52 (± 0.66)
39 (± 0.13)
3G Games Experience in 0-100 points
31 (± 0.14)
33 (± 0.22)
35 (± 0.20)
35 (± 0.22)
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Inc.

Voice App Experience

Voice App Experience
in 0-100 points
Grameenphone
63.9
Robi
65.5
Banglalink
72.1
Airtel
68.4
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image
Voice App Experience
Additional Metrics
in 0-100 points
4G Voice App Experience
69.2 (± 0.22) 69.5 (± 0.32) 78.0 (± 0.25) 71.1 (± 0.35)
3G Voice App Experience
55.5 (± 0.36) 59.4 (± 0.54) 65.3 (± 0.46) 64.6 (± 0.61)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Voice App Experience in 0-100 points
69 (± 0.22)
69 (± 0.32)
78 (± 0.25)
71 (± 0.35)
3G Voice App Experience in 0-100 points
55 (± 0.36)
59 (± 0.54)
65 (± 0.46)
65 (± 0.61)
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Inc.

Download Speed Experience

Download Speed Experience
in Mbps
Grameenphone
7.1
Robi
6.4
Banglalink
8.2
Airtel
6.5
02.557.510
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image
Download Speed Experience
Additional Metrics
in Mbps
4G Download Speed
9.2 (± 0.10) 8.0 (± 0.15) 11.7 (± 0.17) 7.9 (± 0.16)
3G Download Speed
3.8 (± 0.06) 4.0 (± 0.08) 4.1 (± 0.08) 4.6 (± 0.10)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Download Speed in Mbps
9 (± 0.10)
8 (± 0.15)
12 (± 0.17)
8 (± 0.16)
3G Download Speed in Mbps
4 (± 0.06)
4 (± 0.08)
4 (± 0.08)
5 (± 0.10)
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Inc.

Upload Speed Experience

Upload Speed Experience
in Mbps
Grameenphone
2.7
Robi
2.5
Banglalink
2.9
Airtel
2.5
01.252.53.755
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image
Upload Speed Experience
Additional Metrics
in Mbps
4G Upload Speed
3.9 (± 0.05) 3.6 (± 0.06) 4.6 (± 0.08) 3.6 (± 0.06)
3G Upload Speed
0.8 (± 0.01) 0.8 (± 0.02) 0.9 (± 0.02) 0.9 (± 0.02)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Upload Speed in Mbps
4 (± 0.05)
4 (± 0.06)
5 (± 0.08)
4 (± 0.06)
3G Upload Speed in Mbps
1 (± 0.01)
1 (± 0.02)
1 (± 0.02)
1 (± 0.02)
Mobile Network Experience Report | July 2020 | © Opensignal Inc.

4G Availability

4G Availability
% of time
Grameenphone
80.3
Robi
78.6
Banglalink
75.7
Airtel
81.1
021.2542.563.7585
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

4G Coverage Experience

4G Coverage Experience
in 0-10 points
Grameenphone
6.1
Robi
5.8
Banglalink
3.1
Airtel
5.8
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image
Learn more

Opensignal measures the real-world experience of consumers on mobile networks in the places they live, work and travel.

We continually adapt our methodology to best represent the true experience of smartphone users. Therefore, comparisons of the results to past reports should be considered indicative only.

For every metric we calculate statistical confidence intervals indicated on our graphs. When confidence intervals overlap, our measured results are too close to declare a winner. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple winners.

In our bar graphs we represent confidence intervals as boundaries on either sides of graph bars. In our supporting-metric charts we show confidence intervals as +/- numerical values.

More about Methodology

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For every metric we calculate statistical confidence intervals indicated on our graphs. When confidence intervals overlap, our measured results are too close to declare a winner. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners.

In our bar graphs we represent confidence intervals as boundaries on either sides of graph bars.

In our supporting-metric charts we show confidence intervals as +/- numerical values.

Why confidence intervals are vital in analyzing mobile network experience