Colombia

Tigo snatched the Video Experience award away from Movistar in our last report, after an impressive improvement in its score. This time, our users on Tigo’s network saw a small increase of 0.4 points, increasing to 65.5 points. This places the operator in the Very Good (65-75) category, which means generally fast loading times and occasional stalling but the experience might have been somewhat inconsistent across users and/or video providers/resolutions. Other Colombian operators saw declines in their scores — previously second-placed Claro’s result slipped by 7.1 points (11.9%), while Movistar saw a decrease of 2.5 points (4.2%). Movistar stayed in the Good category (55-65) with its score of 56.1, but Claro’s score of 52.5 moved the operator down to the Fair category (40-55) — and behind Movistar’s back, to third place in the country. These declines contributed to Tigo’s increased lead over the second-placed operator (previously Claro, currently Movistar), from 5.5 to 9.3 points

Looking at our users’ experience broken down by mobile technology generation, our Tigo users enjoyed a Very Good (65-75) 4G Video Experience, while Claro and Movistar rated as Good (55-65). Both these operators moved down one category from Very Good, compared to our January 2021 report. Video Experience quantifies users’ perceived quality of video streamed to mobile devices on a scale from 0 to 100 by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's network. The videos tested include a mixture of resolutions and are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers.

After sharing the award with Claro in our last report, Tigo edged out its competitor to win the Games Experience award outright, with a score of 45.8 points. Claro achieved 39 points, ahead of Movistar’s score of 36.3.

Opensignal’s Games Experience analyzes how mobile network conditions — including latency, packet loss and jitter — impact the real-time multiplayer mobile gameplay over operators’ networks. 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.

Similarly to the Video Experience award, Tigo claimed the Voice App Experience award in our previous report, prying it out of Claro’s hands — and this time, it also managed to modestly improve its score, by 0.6 points to 75.6 points. This placed Tigo in the Acceptable (74-80) category — users were generally able to comprehend without repetition, but experienced perceptible call quality impairments and may have heard clicking sounds or distortion.

Tigo’s competitors experienced declines in their scores — Claro by 2.9 points, Movistar by 1.9 points. Both of them ranked in the Poor (66-74) category, which means the status quo for Movistar but a relegation for Claro, down from Acceptable in our previous report.

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 an 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.

Opensignal users in Colombia enjoyed the fastest average download speeds on Tigo’s network (17.9 Mbps), for the second time in a row — ahead of Claro (11.1 Mbps) and Movistar (10 Mbps). However, our users on all Colombian operators experienced slight declines in average download speeds. Tigo and Movistar’s scores decreased by 1 Mbps (5.1%) and 1.1 Mbps (10.1%) respectively, but Claro saw a more significant drop of 3.6 Mbps (24.3%) — which led to Tigo increasing its lead over second-placed Claro from 4.2 to 6.8 Mbps.

In terms of 4G download speeds, our users on Tigo experienced average download speeds of 20.9 Mbps. It was the only network that exceeded the 20 Mbps threshold, compared to 14 Mbps on Claro’s and 12.8 Mbps on Movistar’s networks. All operators saw declines in 4G average download speeds, ranging from 1.6 to 4.7 Mbps

Tigo wins the Upload Speed Experience award for the second time in a row. Our users on Tigo experienced average upload speeds of 7.2 Mbps, which is 1.2 Mbps (20%) faster than in our previous report. This helped Tigo to establish its lead over second-placed Movistar to 2 Mbps (39.4%). Our users on Movistar’s network saw a slight increase in average upload speeds of 0.1 Mbps, while those on Claro’s network saw a decline of 0.5 Mbps, down to 4.5 Mbps.

We saw similar trends when looking by network generation. In 4G Download Speed, our Tigo users enjoyed an increase of 1 Mbps, up to 8.6 Mbps, while our users on Claro’s network experienced a decline of 0.6 Mbps, down to 5.8 Mbps. The average 4G upload speed on Movistar as experienced by our users remained unchanged at 7 Mbps.

This is the third report in a row in which Tigo has hit a milestone for 4G Availability. The operator crossed the 80% mark in our July 2020 report, followed by passing the 85% mark in January 2021. The operator did not slow down and this time around, after an impressive boost of 5.3 percentage points, Tigo hit the 90% milestone and achieved a score of 91% or 10.3 percentage points ahead of the second-placed Claro (80.8%). Movistar saw an increase of 1.6 percentage points and is very close to hitting the 80% threshold with its score of 79.3%.

4G Availability shows the proportion of time users with a 4G device and subscription have a 4G connection. It measures what proportion of time people have a 4G network connection in the places they most commonly frequent, something often missed by traditional coverage metrics.

Claro is victorious for the 4G Coverage Experience award for the fourth time in a row — it has won the award outright ever since we introduced it in our Mobile Network Experience report on Colombia in January 2020. Claro scored 6.3 points — 0.2 more than in our previous report — and widened its lead over second-placed Movistar from 1.4 to 1.5 points. Tigo saw an increase of 0.3 points and with its score of 4.7 is just 0.1 points behind Movistar.

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. It measures the mobile coverage experience in all the locations that matter most to everyday users.