Mobile Network Experience Report Poland May 2021

Poland

Mobile Network Experience Report
May 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
Robert Wyrzykowski Senior Analyst

Key Findings

Major improvements seen in average download speeds for three operators

Orange is the outright winner of the Download Speed Experience award for the third consecutive time. Our users on its network enjoyed average download speeds of 29.7 Mbps which is a 3.4 Mbps (12.9%) increase compared to the previous report. But Orange’s lead over its nearest rival decreased from 4.9 Mbps to 3.3 Mbps, as our users on other Polish operators also saw impressive speed boosts. T-Mobile’s score soared by 5 Mbps (23.2%) while Play’s increased by 4.2 Mbps (19.8%) since the last report. Compared to their counterparts on other networks, our Plus users saw only a modest improvement of 0.4 Mbps (2.3%) in their average download speeds. The operator continues to lag on this measure and the gap between Plus and its competitors’ score has widened.

Orange and T-Mobile jointly crowned for the Upload Speed Experience award

In our first Mobile Network Experience report on Poland, Orange won the award for Upload Speed Experience — however, due to declines in average upload speeds experienced by our users, it lost to T-Mobile in the following report. This time, Orange pulled through and thanks to an increase of 1 Mbps (14.5%) in its average upload speeds, forced a statistical tie with T-Mobile — which resulted in a joint victory for both operators. Our users on both Play and Plus saw average download speeds of 6.7 Mbps, with increases of 8.6% and 5.9% since our last report, respectively.

Orange claims the Video Experience award, but competitors are close behind

Orange secures yet another outright win for Video Experience, this time with a score of 72.6 points — an increase of 1.8 points (2.5%) since our previous report. Orange has kept firm hold of this award since we started publishing reports on mobile network experience in Poland. However, T-Mobile is hot on Orange’s heels — the operator saw a 3.3 (4.8%) point surge in its score and managed to narrow Orange’s lead from 2.1 to 0.6 points. Play saw the biggest improvement with an increase of four points (6.5%), the operator scored 66.2 points and joined Orange and T-Mobile in the Very Good (65-75) category. This means our users experienced generally fast loading times and only occasional stalling when streaming videos on their mobile devices.

T-Mobile and Orange share the Voice App Experience and Games Experience awards

T-Mobile won the Voice App Experience award outright in our previous two reports — and it was also the sole winner of the Games Experience award in our last report on Poland. However, this time the operator shares these two awards with Orange, who forced statistical ties. Also, both operators have moved up a category in both metrics . They placed in the Good (80-87) category for Voice App Experience — this means many users were satisfied, but some experienced minor quality impairments. For Games Experience, T-Mobile and Orange ranked as Fair (65-75) — most users felt they had control over the game, but the majority of players noticed a delay between their actions and the outcomes in the game. Play and Plus stayed in the Acceptable (74-80) and Poor (40-65) categories for Voice App Experience and Games Experience, respectively. However, only two points separate all four operators in Voice App Experience.

Orange defends the titles for 4G Availability and 4G Coverage Experience

For the third time in a row, Orange remains unmatched in terms of 4G Availability and 4G Coverage Experience. Regarding 4G Availability, Orange’s score rose by 1.8 percentage points, causing it to move back above the 90% mark that it slipped below in our last report. Other Polish operators have yet to surpass the 90% threshold. However, T-Mobile saw the largest increase in this metric — a gain of 4.1 percentage points compared to the previous report. Orange also came first in 4G Coverage Experience, scoring 9.1 on a 10-point scale — ahead of Plus (8.9) and Play (8.8). This metric analyzes the locations where customers of a network operator received a 4G signal relative to the locations visited by users of all network operators.

Introduction

In Opensignal's third mobile network experience report on Poland, Orange triumphs in all seven categories — with four outright wins and three joint victories with T-Mobile. Orange outright wins awards for the third time in the row for Video Experience, Download Speed Experience, 4G Availability and 4G Coverage Experience. T-Mobile retains its awards for Games Experience, Voice App Experience and Upload Speed Experience, but this time has to share them with Orange — making this the first report in which Orange has stood on the winners’ podium for Voice App Experience. Noteworthy, Orange was a joint winner for Games Experience and the outright winner of the Upload Speed Experience award our May 2020 report, but T-Mobile was the sole winner for both in our last report.

Polish mobile service providers are still waiting for a key spectrum auction of new mid bands — the government intends to allocate the 3.7 GHz band by 27th August 2021, after the original tender has been delayed due to the pandemic and changes in legislation.

However, all four Polish operators have already launched their 5G networks and have big plans to expand them further. Plus plans to cover 11 million people in 150 towns and cities by the end of 2021, using 1,700 base stations. The operator claims to have provided 5G coverage to 5.2 million Poles by the end of November 2020, using the 2.6 GHz band — the 5G footprint includes the capital city of Warsaw along with other major cities in Eastern Poland, where Plus rolled-out its 5G network with Nokia’s support.

Notably, in March 2021, Plus decided to sell its network assets to Cellnex, a mobile tower firm, for EUR1.6 billion — including 7,000 towers and active infrastructure, that includes radio carriers, fibre backbone network and a network of microwave radio links. As part of the deal, Cellnex agreed to deploy 1,500 new sites for Plus for EUR 600 million, dedicated mainly to 5G. This is not the first Cellnex investment in Poland, as it purchased 60% of Play’s infrastructure unit earlier in October 2020, for EUR 800 million. Speaking of Play — the operator, acquired by the French telco group Iliad, secured a PLN 100 million ($27 million) investment from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to fund its further 5G roll-out. It has also entered a partnership with Samsung to test Samsung’s 4G and 5G solutions in terms of their performance and their ability to interoperate with Play’s 2G/3G legacy networks. Play will conduct the trials using its labs and commercial networks in the second quarter of 2021.

Our results in this report are based on measurements collected across all major mobile operators in Poland – Orange, Play, Plus and T-Mobile – over the period of 90 days between February 1, 2021, and May 1, 2021. 5G measurements contributed to the overall scores.

Opensignal Awards Table

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

Overview

Click on metric labels below for a quick preview
Video Experience
in 0-100 points
Orange
72.6
Play
66.2
Plus
64.0
T-Mobile
72.0
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
Orange
72.6
Play
66.2
Plus
64.0
T-Mobile
72.0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

Games Experience

Games Experience
in 0-100 points
Orange
68.7
Play
62.7
Plus
61.7
T-Mobile
67.5
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

Voice App Experience

Voice App Experience
in 0-100 points
Orange
80.2
Play
78.9
Plus
78.2
T-Mobile
80.0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

Download Speed Experience

Download Speed Experience
in Mbps
Orange
29.7
Play
25.4
Plus
18.9
T-Mobile
26.4
07.51522.530
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

Upload Speed Experience

Upload Speed Experience
in Mbps
Orange
8.1
Play
6.7
Plus
6.7
T-Mobile
7.9
02.557.510
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

4G Availability

4G Availability
% of time
Orange
90.4
Play
87.3
Plus
81.2
T-Mobile
86.5
023.7547.571.2595
The brackets represent confidence intervals.
Download Image

4G Coverage Experience

4G Coverage Experience
in 0-10 points
Orange
9.1
Play
8.8
Plus
8.9
T-Mobile
8.5
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