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.