Introduction
Little has changed in terms of our awards table since our last report, with A1 still holding the vast majority of awards — the operator won two of our experiential metrics, Video Experience and Games Experience, outright and was a joint winner with Magenta for the third, Voice App Experience. A1 also won both our speed awards — Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience — along with 4G Coverage Experience, for a total haul of five outright wins. Finally, A1 also succeeded in forcing a three-way tie between itself and the two operators that were previously statistically tied for 4G Availability, 3 and Magenta.
While overall Download Speed Experience scores have risen across all three operators, when we break our users’ speeds down by mobile network technology generation, a different story emerges. While the same was true for 4G Download Speed, 3G Download Speed scores declined across the board, with our A1 and Magenta users reporting drops of 1.1 and 1.4 Mbps, while our 3 users observed a more modest decline of 0.4 Mbps. However, this pattern is absent as far as Upload Speed Experience is concerned.
Looking ahead, the news that Austria’s Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting & Telecoms (RTR) has completed an auction of 5G spectrum in the 700 MHz, 1500 MHz and 2100 MHz bands, bodes well for the long-term future of the Austrian Mobile Network Experience as does the obligation associated with the 700 MHz licenses to provide 1,702 out of 2,100 underserved or unserved communities with mobile broadband coverage by 2027. One important differentiator from the results of the auction is that unlike its peers A1 did not obtain any 700 MHz spectrum, which is likely to make it harder for the operator to extend 5G services into rural areas. 5G opens up new ways to boost users’ mobile network experience as we have seen in countries where 5G is live and has been available for some time.
In this report we have examined the mobile network experience of the three main mobile network operators in Austria: A1, Magenta and 3; over a period of 90 days beginning June 1, 2020 to see how they compare.