Introduction
Chile enjoys a competitive wireless market with four national operators. In addition, the country's president just announced plans for a 5G spectrum auction. Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said that companies that want to participate in the auction will be evaluated by their technical capabilities as well as their financial resources. Pinera estimated that 5G will reach 90% of Chile’s population but didn’t provide a timeline for when it will be available.
On the 4G front, Entel continues to be a leader among the mobile operators in Chile. The mobile operator won three Opensignal awards outright and tied for another three awards. The only award that it didn’t win outright or tie for the winning position was Video Experience, which Claro won.
In terms of 4G Coverage Experience, Entel achieved a score of 8.0 on a scale of 1-10 for the first time. This is an increase from a score of 7.9 in our March 2020 report. Claro and WOM also saw their scores rise by 0.1 points, while Movistar’s has not changed since our last report.
However, in 4G Availability we saw a slight decline among three of the four operators. Claro had the largest decline of 3.4 percentage points from a score of 75% in our March 2020 report to a score of 71.5%.
We also saw a decline in other categories as well. In Video Experience, Claro won the category with a score of 62.5 but that was a 1.7% decline from 64.2 in March. WOM had a 4.7% decline in its Video Experience score from 55.5 in March to 52.9 in August. In Voice App Experience, Entel experienced a 5.2% decline from a score of 76.6 in March to 72.7 in August and WOM saw its score decline 5.5% from 70.9 in March to 67 in August. These declines were most likely related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In mid-April the Chilean government instituted a general lockdown in the city of Santiago and wide swathes of the country. The lockdowns caused an increase in data consumption, which in turn resulted in more congestion on the cellular networks. The lockdowns in Chile were only recently relaxed in some parts of the country. Opensignal took an in-depth look at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mobile networks around the globe in this June report.
In Download Speed Experience we also saw some declines. Entel, which tied for first place with Claro, saw its download speed score decline by 1.7 Mbps from 18. in our last report to 16.3 Mbps. WOM saw its Download Speed Experience score decline from 10.3 Mbps to 9.4 Mbps. And in Upload Speed Experience our users also saw some decreases. Entel, which tied for first place with WOM, saw its Upload speed decline from 9.7 Mbps in our previous report to 8.5 Mbps. Movistar also saw a slight drop from 6.4 Mbps in March to 5.8 Mbps in August.
In this report, we’ve analyzed the mobile network experience for Chile’s four national operators, Entel, Movistar, Claro and WOM, over a 90-day period starting May 1, 2020 and ending July 29, 2020.