Turkey

Turkcell continues to lead on Video Experience in Turkey. The operator is the winner of our Video Experience award and placed in the Very Good category with a score of 72.4 points (on a scale of 0-100) — a slight decline of 0.3 points since our last report. Our users on Vodafone also reported a decrease of 0.5 points, while their Türk Telekom counterparts saw an improvement of 1.6 points. As a result, Türk Telekom has reduced the gap with Turkcell from 2.8 points seen in the last report to 0.8 points this time. Türk Telekom and Vodafone also placed in the Very Good category with scores of 71.5 and 67.8 points, respectively.

Looking solely at 4G Video Experience, all three operators maintained Very Good ratings; however, their scores declined between 0.4 to 1.3 points since the last report. In contrast, the 3G Video Experience of our users has improved across the board. They reported the greatest improvement of 5.3 points on Türk Telekom’s network, followed by Vodafone and Turkcell — 2.8 and 0.6 points, respectively.

Opensignal’s Video Experience metric quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's networks. The metric is derived from an International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-based approach, built upon detailed studies which have derived a relationship between technical parameters, including picture quality, video loading time and stall rate, with the perceived video experience as reported by real people. To calculate video experience, we are directly measuring video streams on end-user devices and using this ITU approach to quantify the overall video experience for each operator on a scale from 0 to 100. The videos tested include a mixture of resolutions and are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers.

Türk Telekom is the new winner of mobile Games Experience in Turkey. Its score of 65 points is an impressive 4.1 points above that of second-placed Vodafone, making Türk Telekom the only operator to place in the Fair Games Experience category. Meanwhile, Vodafone and Turkcell placed in the Poor category with a score of 60.9 points and 58.2 points, respectively.

The Games Experience metric quantifies the experience when playing real-time multiplayer 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. 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, Garena Freefire, and PUBG — played around the world.

Türk Telekom holds on to our Voice App Experience award with a score of 80.8 points. The operator’s lead over its peers on this measure has increased slightly since our last report, rising by 0.9 points to 1.4 points above second-placed Vodafone’s score of 79.4 points (on a 100-point scale). This is due to a one-point rise reported by our Türk Telekom users — enough to upgrade Türk Telekom’s Voice App Experience rating from Acceptable to Good. On the other hand, Vodafone and Turkcell continue to place in the Acceptable category — the former increased its score by 0.1 points, while the latter’s score fell by 0.4 points from 78.1 to 77.7 since our last report.

A Good Voice App Experience means that many users were satisfied, although some may have experienced minor quality impairments such as clicking sounds or distortion. Opensignal's Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger — 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. Voice App Experience for each operator is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100.

Turkcell has retained the top spot on Download Speed Experience for the third time in a row as our users observed overall download speeds of 27.1 Mbps. However, its lead over Türk Telekom has shrunk once again — down from 2.4 Mbps seen in our previous report to 2 Mbps this time. This is because average download speeds observed by our Türk Telekom users rose by 1.8 Mbps to 25 Mbps, compared to the 1.4 Mbps rise seen by our Turkcell users. On the other hand, Vodafone users saw their speeds decline by 1.3 Mbps to 15.2 Mbps — 39.5% to 44% slower than the speeds observed by our users on the other two networks.

When we break down Download Speed Experience by mobile technology generation, Turkcell and Türk Telekom are statistically tied on 4G Download Speed withs speeds averaging 31.4 Mbps and 30.7 Mbps, respectively.

Turkcell has broken the statistical tie that existed between it and Türk Telekom in our last report to win our Upload Speed Experience award outright. This was due to an increase of 0.5 Mbps observed by our Turkcell users, as our Türk Telekom users have seen no change in their average upload speeds since our last report. Meanwhile, our Vodafone users saw their speeds decline by 0.5 Mbps.

Upload speeds are becoming increasingly important in mobile services, with changing usage patterns and consumption habits. Mobile users now engage more on social media apps — creating and sharing high-resolution images and videos — and are moving away from content consumption to content creation, which gives operators with the fastest upload speeds a distinct advantage.

While all three operator’s scores have risen since our last report, Vodafone continues to be the only operator with a 4G Availability score above the 90% mark. The operator won our 4G Availability award with a score of 92.9 points — an improvement of two percentage points since our last report. Turkcell’s score increased by 1.3 percentage points to 89.5%, while Türk Telekom’s score rose by a notable three percentage points to 85.7%

Little has changed since our last report in terms of 4G Coverage Experience with Turkcell occupying first place. The operator’s score increased slightly by 0.2 points to 6.7 points. Meanwhile, Türk Telekom and Vodafone’s scores both increased by 0.1 points to 5.1 and 6.2 points, respectively.

Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience 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.