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Earlier in 2020, Rakuten launched its own network, and as a result this is the first time we have included Rakuten in an Opensignal Japan Mobile Network Experience report. But in its rookie report, Rakuten leads the established three operators as our Rakuten users saw 11.8 Mbps upload speeds compared with 9.9 Mbps for SoftBank, 9.5 Mbps for DoCoMo and 8.3 Mbps for au. It's unusual for a new operator to win an Opensignal award at a first attempt.
Our users saw speeds of 52.3 Mbps using NTT DoCoMo ahead of second placed au with 48.8 Mbps. As in our last report in April, DoCoMo wins the Opensignal Download Speed Award for Japan. Third placed SoftBank was slightly behind with a score of 42.7 Mbps while newly launched Rakuten lagged with 21.6 Mbps.
With a score of 79.1 for Video Experience, SoftBank wins the Opensignal award again ahead of DoCoMo and au. The gap between SoftBank and its immediate rivals has narrowed since our last report. Back then, in April, 3.4 points separated the three operators, now just 3.1 points separates the Video Experience of SoftBank, DoCoMo and au. However, Rakuten is in last place with a score of 64.9, or 11 points behind the third placed operator.
For the first time, Opensignal has compared the multiplayer mobile Games Experience in Japan, and SoftBank adds this award to its other experiential wins for Video Experience and Voice App Experience. However, competition is tight and there are only a few points separating users' experience for gaming and voice app on each of the four operators.
The time Japan's 4G users spend connected to 4G technology, or 4G Availability, is almost 100%. The winner of Opensignal's 4G Availability award, au, scores an outstanding 99.3%. Even Japan's fourth placed operator scores a still impressive 97.8%. With 5G now live in Japan, 4G continues to be important because current 5G services using non-standalone access technology continue to require a 4G connection to be available in order for a 5G smartphone to connect to a 5G signal.
In our latest look at Japan's mobile network experience we compare new network operator Rakuten with its long established rivals for the first time. Rakuten has large aspirations to use the latest network technologies, new vendors and innovation to deliver mobile services in a more efficient way. In this report, we see how the real-world experience of Rakuten's users compares with the goals of the company.
Also, for the first time, we reveal Opensignal's first ever winner of the Games Experience award in Japan. Given the enormous and long standing popularity of mobile games for the last two decades here — much longer than in most other countries globally — it is striking to see the high quality of Japan's mobile games experience.
In our recent Global Mobile Network Experience Awards 2020 report Japan's operators rated highly:
However, for Japan's mobile users, it's useful to compare the experience across Japan's operators that offer service inside Japan.
| Mobile Experience Awards Japan | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
October 2020,
Japan Report
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N
NTT DoCoMo
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S
SoftBank
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a
au
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R
Rakuten
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Video Experience
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Games Experience
| ||||
Voice App Experience
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Download Speed Experience
| ||||
Upload Speed Experience
| ||||
4G Availability
| ||||
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Mobile Experience Awards Winners
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October 2020,
Japan
|
|---|---|
|
Video Experience
|
S
SoftBank
|
|
Games Experience
|
S
SoftBank
|
|
Voice App Experience
|
S
SoftBank
|
|
Download Speed Experience
|
N
NTT DoCoMo
|
|
Upload Speed Experience
|
R
Rakuten
|
|
4G Availability
|
a
au
|
SoftBank again wins the Video Experience award with a score of 79.1 on our 100 point scale, which puts it into the Excellent category. This means users will see a very consistent experience across video streaming providers and resolutions tested, with fast loading times and almost non-existent stalling. NTT DoCoMo and au also rated as Excellent with scores of 77.2 and 75.9 respectively
Rakuten users' Video Experience was in the Good category with a score of 64.9. This means users see a less consistent experience, even from the same video streaming provider and particularly for higher resolutions, with noticeably slower loading times and stalling not being uncommon. As a newly launched operator, it is critical to see how the mobile network experience of Rakuten's users changes as the company continues to expand its network. As it grows the company will add both network capacity and new customers, which will together affect the resulting mobile network experience of Rakuten's users.
This is the first time we have analyzed the Games Experience of each of Japan's operators. Opensignal's Games Experience metric is a measure of how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator's network. Measured on a scale of 0-100, it analyzes how the multiplayer mobile Games Experience is affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter to determine the impact on gameplay and the overall multiplayer Games Experience.
SoftBank wins the first Opensignal Games Experience award for Japan with 84.9 points on our 100 point scale. However, competition for this category is fierce and just a few points separate the four operators, with second placed DoCoMo scoring 84.6, au on 83.3 and new player Rakuten's score of 81.8 is only just behind the established operators. As a newly launched network, Rakuten's score is impressively close to the winner even though Rakuten gamers are in fourth place for Games Experience.
Games Experience 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 popular real-time multiplayer mobile games across battle royale, sport and massively multiple online battle arena (MOBA) games. Examples of games in these genres include Arena of Valor, Fortnite, Free Fire, Knives Out and Pro Evolution Soccer.
In another close race, SoftBank wins its third Opensignal award in this report, adding Voice App Experience to its Games Experience and Video Experience awards. Our users on all four operators observed a Good rating for Voice App Experience with scores varying by under 1 point on our 100 point scale. Again, Rakuten has done well to come this close to the three established operators in another award category.
Opensignal's Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — for example mobile voice apps such as LINE, WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger etc. — using a model derived from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-based approach for quantifying overall voice call quality and a series of calibrated technical parameters. This model characterizes the exact relationship between the technical measurements and perceived call quality.
NTT DoCoMo users saw the fastest Download Speed Experience with a score of 52.3 Mbps, slightly ahead of second placed au's score of 48.8 Mbps. SoftBank placed third with a slightly slower 42.7 Mbps but Rakuten users saw a noticeably slower download speed than the three established operators with a score of 21.6 Mbps.
The results of the Download Speed and Video Experience categories highlight why it is important to measure the mobile network experience in different ways. It's not possible to estimate the Video or Games Experience from measures of speed because of the varied characteristics of video and gaming traffic and the way operators manage different types of data traffic on their network. For example, while DoCoMo won the Download Speed Experience award, it placed second in Video Experience. Similarly, the winner of Video Experience, SoftBank, was placed just third for Download Speed Experience.
New operators normally take time to solve technical network teething issues, expand the reach of their network, and add sufficient capacity to offer their users a competitive network experience. Because of this, most new operators Opensignal sees globally struggle to match existing operators on measures of mobile network experience and so resort to pricing their mobile services lower to entice users to switch to them.
However, Rakuten has broken the mold, by winning a major Opensignal award at their first attempt. Rakuten users saw the fastest average upload speeds, winning the Opensignal Upload Experience award with 11.8 Mbps ahead of second placed SoftBank's score of 9.9 Mbps. NTT DoCoMo followed in third place with 9.5 Mbps and au trailed with 8.3 Mbps.
We have seen that Rakuten users' experience varies based on whether they connect to Rakuten's own radio network, or whether they are connecting in other parts of Japan where Rakuten's network is not yet available but users roam onto partner KDDI. In our previous look at Rakuten, we found the Upload Experience was more than twice as fast when using Rakuten's own network compared with roaming. If this difference persists, then as Rakuten expands the reach of their network, and its users spend more time on-net, the overall combined upload speed of Rakuten's users will increase further.
There is little to say about the difference in 4G Availability between Japan's operators because it is universally good. Our measure of the time users spend connected to 4G differs by just 1.5 percentage points across the four operators. Winner au has a near perfect score of 99.3%. Again, Rakuten users' mobile network experience is comparable to the existing operators on 4G Availability.
While 5G has launched in Japan, the operators are using the initial version of the 5G standard and non-standalone access (NSA). This means that for a 5G smartphone user to connect to a 5G network they must also be connected to a 4G connection at the same time. So, for now, Japan's wide 4G Availability is an essential and valuable foundation for 5G services as well as supporting 4G users. When Japan's operators launch 5G services with standalone access (SA), 5G users will no longer need a 4G signal to connect to 5G. However, very few operators have launched SA to date.
Japan's operators use different mobile technology generations. For the time period covered by this report, Rakuten offered an exclusively 4G service but has now recently launched 5G. The other three operators offered a mixture of technology generations, including both 4G and 5G, and in some cases also 3G.
Opensignal has expanded the number of cities included in this Japan Mobile Network Experience report to cover 15 cities across the country. We see differences from the national results in many locations, and wide variation in the experience of Rakuten's users in particular, in many cities users see a network experience close to the existing operators.
In Tokyo, au wins the Download Speed Experience award with 57.2 Mbps and national winner DoCoMo is the runner up. It's the same reversal of the national award in Osaka, where again au pips DoCoMo to the award. But Rakuten's Download Speed Experience in Tokyo is much closer to the winner than it is nationally with a score of 35.2 Mbps in Tokyo which is only a few Mbps behind third placed SoftBank score of 46.2 Mbps.
In a number of cities Rakuten's users' experience is noticeably better than in others. In Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kobe and Sapporo the experience is much weaker. This is likely because Rakuten's 4G network has deployed less wireless capacity in those locations. Opensignal understands that Rakuten's 4G network uses the 1800 MHz band, and the company has deployed different amounts of spectrum in different cities ranging from a substantial 20 Mhz in locations like Tokyo down to just 5 MHz in some areas. In total, Rakuten wins eight city awards outright, and joint wins in a further 23 city awards.
SoftBank either wins or jointly wins every experiential city award — Games, Video or Voice App Experience — except Voice App Experience in Funabashi.
In Kyoto, home of Nintendo, the Games Experience award is won outright by SoftBank, but Download Speed Experience is jointly won by DoCoMo and au, with SoftBank in third place. For tourists looking to share photos or videos of the many world heritage sites, all four operators tie for the Upload Experience Award in Kyoto.
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