Mobile Network Experience Report Colombia January 2021

Colombia

Mobile Network Experience Report
January 2021

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
Hardik Khatri Technical Analyst

Key Findings

Tigo is the operator to beat in Colombia

In this report, Tigo won five of our awards outright. The mobile operator took first place awards in Video Experience, Voice App Experience, Download Speed Experience, Upload Speed Experience and 4G Availability. It also jointly won our Games Experience award with Claro, and only lost the 4G Coverage Experience award which was held on to by Claro.

Tigo goes from last-placed to winner of the Video Experience Experience award

Tigo, which placed third in our last report, came top on our measure of Video Experience, with an impressive 6.3 points improvement in its score, aided by the declines reported by our Claro and Movistar users of 1.7 points and 4.6 points respectively. As a result, Tigo upgraded its Video Experience rating from Good to Very Good, while Claro and Movistar continued to place in the Good category. This means our Colombian users on Tigo’s network enjoyed generally faster load times and only occasional stalling compared to their peers on Claro or Movistar.

Tigo claims both our speed metric awards

Our Colombia users reported the fastest average download speeds on Tigo’s network, with the operator racking up an impressive Download Speed Experience score of 18.8 Mbps, up by 5.4 Mbps from our previous report. With this boost, our Tigo users now enjoy 4.2 Mbps (28.7%) faster download speeds than their counterparts on Claro and 7.8 Mbps (70.1%) faster than those on Movistar, on average. Meanwhile, Tigo also beat both Claro and Movistar on Upload Speed Experience, with its users observing an average speed of 6 Mbps, 0.9-1 Mbps higher than their peers.

Tigo hits 85% milestone on 4G Availability

In our last report, two operators — Claro and Tigo — had surpassed the 80% mark in the 4G Availability metric, and this time Tigo has managed to break through the 85% milestone and win our 4G Availability award with a score of 85.8% — a noteworthy growth of 5.6 percentage points in the past six months. This means our Tigo users were able to connect to 4G services more than 85% of the time. Claro was second-placed with a score of 80.2%, while Movistar was further away with 77.7%.

Tigo sweeps away the Voice App Experience award, users report improvements across the board

Tigo took the lead in our measure of the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger, etc. The operator won our Voice App Experience award with a score of 75 points — an improvement of 2.5 points, which tipped Tigo into the Acceptable category. Our Claro and Movistar users also reported upswings of 0.6 points and 1.5 points, respectively, by virtue of which Claro joined Tigo in the Acceptable category, though Movistar remained in the Poor rating bracket. An Acceptable rating means users were satisfied with the quality of the call and were generally able to comprehend without repetition, while some may have suffered from perceptible call quality impairments such as clicking sounds or distortion. Likewise, a Poor rating means many users were dissatisfied and likely suffered from increased call quality impairments.

Introduction

Over the past few reports, we've seen Claro dominating the mobile network experience landscape in Colombia. But our latest analysis shows that another operator has emerged as a market leader. Tigo has won five out of our seven national awards in this report, excluding a joint win with Claro for the Games Experience award. This is likely due to a significant improvement in Tigo’s 4G Availability, since our other metrics are affected by whether the user is connected to 4G, a higher 4G Availability can help improve overall scores. With the multi-band auction that took place in December 2019, Tigo claims to have extensively rolled out the newly acquired spectrum in the 700 MHz band to fulfill the underlying obligations to bring 4G connectivity to 3,658 rural locations across 32 departments of the country, including the San Andres archipelago.

In this report, we've analyzed the mobile network experience for Colombia's three key national operators, Claro, Movistar, and Tigo, over the 90 days starting September 1, 2020. As this period includes a phase of COVID-19 measures implemented, it also indicates to what degree the country’s mobile experience has weathered the resulting changes in people’s data consumption habits and locations. Overall the mobile experience in Colombia has been resilient given the challenges everyone has been facing since 2020.

In the future, with Claro having unveiled the ‘Claro Share’ scheme to grant its rivals access to its mobile and fixed networks, and Colombia’s Communications Regulatory Commission (Comision de Regulacion de Comunicaciones, CRC) reportedly ordering the country’s mobile operators to sign interconnection agreements with market newcomer Partners (WOM), it will be interesting to see how competition shapes up and the effect it has on the Colombian mobile network experience.

Opensignal Awards Table

Mobile Experience Awards Colombia
January 2021, Colombia 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
January 2021, Colombia
Video Experience
Voice App Experience
Download Speed Experience
Upload Speed Experience
4G Availability
4G Coverage Experience
Mobile Experience Awards Draws
January 2021, Colombia
Games Experience
Download Image

Overview

Click on metric labels below for a quick preview
Video Experience
in 0-100 points
Claro
59.6
Movistar
58.6
Tigo
65.1
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
Claro
59.6
Movistar
58.6
Tigo
65.1
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
69.2 (± 0.23) 66.5 (± 0.40) 71.8 (± 0.36)
3G Video Experience
35.3 (± 0.78) 40.5 (± 1.03) 42.4 (± 1.22)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Video Experience in 0-100 points
69 (± 0.23)
66 (± 0.40)
72 (± 0.36)
3G Video Experience in 0-100 points
35 (± 0.78)
41 (± 1.03)
42 (± 1.22)
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Inc.

Games Experience

Games Experience
in 0-100 points
Claro
43.0
Movistar
38.4
Tigo
43.7
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
53.9 (± 0.34) 43.4 (± 0.51) 58.2 (± 0.62)
3G Games Experience
34.3 (± 0.10) 34.1 (± 0.17) 31.4 (± 0.21)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Games Experience in 0-100 points
54 (± 0.34)
43 (± 0.51)
58 (± 0.62)
3G Games Experience in 0-100 points
34 (± 0.10)
34 (± 0.17)
31 (± 0.21)
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Inc.

Voice App Experience

Voice App Experience
in 0-100 points
Claro
74.3
Movistar
72.1
Tigo
75.0
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
77.2 (± 0.15) 74.6 (± 0.31) 79.3 (± 0.27)
3G Voice App Experience
66.8 (± 0.33) 66.4 (± 0.46) 60.1 (± 0.74)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Voice App Experience in 0-100 points
77 (± 0.15)
75 (± 0.31)
79 (± 0.27)
3G Voice App Experience in 0-100 points
67 (± 0.33)
66 (± 0.46)
60 (± 0.74)
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Inc.

Download Speed Experience

Download Speed Experience
in Mbps
Claro
14.6
Movistar
11.1
Tigo
18.8
05101520
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image
Download Speed Experience
Additional Metrics
in Mbps
4G Download Speed
18.7 (± 0.15) 14.4 (± 0.18) 23.0 (± 0.26)
3G Download Speed
4.4 (± 0.07) 3.5 (± 0.06) 4.8 (± 0.14)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Download Speed in Mbps
19 (± 0.15)
14 (± 0.18)
23 (± 0.26)
3G Download Speed in Mbps
4 (± 0.07)
3 (± 0.06)
5 (± 0.14)
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Inc.

Upload Speed Experience

Upload Speed Experience
in Mbps
Claro
5.0
Movistar
5.1
Tigo
6.0
01.8753.755.6257.5
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image
Upload Speed Experience
Additional Metrics
in Mbps
4G Upload Speed
6.4 (± 0.08) 7.0 (± 0.10) 7.5 (± 0.13)
3G Upload Speed
1.2 (± 0.03) 0.7 (± 0.01) 0.6 (± 0.03)
+/- numeric values represent confidence intervals.
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Limited
4G Upload Speed in Mbps
6 (± 0.08)
7 (± 0.10)
8 (± 0.13)
3G Upload Speed in Mbps
1 (± 0.03)
1 (± 0.01)
1 (± 0.03)
Mobile Network Experience Report | January 2021 | © Opensignal Inc.

4G Availability

4G Availability
% of time
Claro
80.2
Movistar
77.7
Tigo
85.8
022.54567.590
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

4G Coverage Experience

4G Coverage Experience
in 0-10 points
Claro
6.1
Movistar
4.7
Tigo
4.4
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