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Our Ooredoo and Vodafone users reported Video Experience scores of 72.7 and 70.8, respectively. This means that Ooredoo has won our Video Experience award for three reports in a row. However, its lead over Vodafone has shrunk to just 1.9 points (2.6%), down from the 5.8 point (8.1%) lead it held over its rival in our last report. This is due to Ooredoo’s score falling by 3.7 points, while Vodafone’s rose by 0.2 points. The decline in our Ooredoo users’ Video Experience was enough to cause the operator to fall into the Very Good category — down from the Excellent rating it received in our last report and putting it in the same category as its rival.

A Very Good Video Experience indicates that our users enjoyed generally fast loading times and only occasional stalling. However, the experience might have been somewhat inconsistent across users and/or video providers/resolutions. An Excellent rating means that a very consistent experience was observed across all users, video streaming providers and resolutions tested, with fast loading times and almost non-existent stalling.

Ooredoo has now won our Games Experience award for a second time, after winning it in our last report — the first time it was awarded to a Qatari operator. Our Qatari users on both operators’ networks have continued to observe a Poor (40-65) Games Experience.

A Poor Games Experience means that most users found this level of experience unacceptable. The majority of users reported seeing a delay in the gameplay experience and they did not receive immediate feedback on their actions. Many users felt a lack of controllability in the Games Experience.

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.

Voice App Experience is one of our most hotly contested awards, as when we introduced it this time last year Ooredoo was our inaugural winner — but Vodafone proceeded to snatch the award from its hands in our April 2020 report. This time, Ooredoo has reemerged as the victor, winning the award outright with a score of 79.4 points out of 100. This puts Ooredoo 1.9 points ahead of Vodafone’s score of 77.4 points, which compares favorably with Vodafone’s 1.2 point margin of victory in our last report. The change of winner was driven by a 1.7 point increase in Ooredoo’s score and a 1.5 point decline in Vodafone’s. However, both operators have remained in the Acceptable (74-80) category for Voice App Experience.

An Acceptable rating means that some of our users experienced perceptible call quality impairments such as clicking sounds of short duration or distortion, and/or the volume may not have been sufficiently loud. However, listeners were generally able to comprehend without the need for repetition.

Opensignal's Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as 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.

Ooredoo continues to dominate as far as Download Speed Experience is concerned. Our users on its network observed average download speeds of 36.3 Mbps — 8.5 Mbps (30.7%) faster than the 27.8 Mbps observed by our Vodafone users. However, since our last report, Vodafone’s score for this measure of the mobile experience has risen by 3 Mbps, while Ooredoo’s has dropped by 0.7 Mbps. This has caused Ooredoo’s lead to fall by 3.6 Mbps from the 12.2 Mbps it enjoyed in our previous report.

Interestingly, when we break down our users’ Download Speed Experience by mobile network technology generation, they observed their fastest average 3G speeds on Vodafone’s network. Vodafone’s 3G Download Speed score was 2.7 Mbps faster than that of Ooredoo’s. This is in contrast to our previous report when our Ooredoo users observed 3G-only speeds that were 1.5 Mbps faster than their Vodafone counterparts. Since our last report, Ooredoo’s 3G Download Speed score has fallen by 2.5 Mbps (24%), while Vodafone’s has risen by 1.7 Mbps (19%). Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the high proportion of the time that our Qatari users spend connected to 4G services, the changes in 4G Download Speed echoed those for Download Speed Experience and our Ooredoo users reported the fastest average 4G-only speeds.

Vodafone’s 3G Upload Speed score has risen by an impressive 0.6 Mbps (35.8%) since our previous report. As Ooredoo’s score was essentially unchanged, there was no statistical difference between the two operators’ scores for this measure of the mobile experience in this data collection period. As might be expected given the overall results, our Ooreedoo users observed the fastest average 4G upload speeds and these were 6.4 Mbps (68.1%) faster than those seen by their counterparts on Vodafone’s network.

Last time, Ooredoo won our 4G Availability award by a margin of 2.2 percentage points. In this reporting period, its lead has evaporated as its score fell by 0.6 percentage points, while Vodafone’s rose by 0.9 percentage points. As a result, the two operators have become joint winners for this award. The drop in the proportion of time that our Ooredoo users spent connected to 4G services took its score below 90%, but both it and Vodafone’s scores are less than a percentage point away from the mark.

In our last report, the 4G Coverage Experience award was hotly contested, with just 0.2 points separating first-placed Ooredoo from Vodafone, the runner-up. That margin of victory has not withstood the test of time. Vodafone’s score has risen by 0.1 points and as a result the two operators statistically tied for first place in this reporting period.

Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience metric is a measure of how 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 users of all network operators.

In simple terms, 4G Coverage Experience measures the mobile coverage experience in all the locations that matter most to everyday users — i.e., all the places where they live, work and travel. It considers all the areas that Opensignal users visit, the portion of locations that 4G is available to them, and locations that more users visit have higher importance to them.