Introduction
Entel remains the dominant force in the Opensignal awards, winning three awards outright — Games Experience, Download Speed Experience and 4G Coverage Experience. It remains the only Chilean operator to win the Games Experience and 4G Coverage Experience awards. Entel also is a joint winner in three categories — Video Experience, Voice App Experience and 4G Availability. On the other hand, WOM has emerged a strong contender, racking up one outright win for Upload Speed Experience and sharing all three joint wins with Entel. In contrast, neither Claro or Movistar have been able to win any awards this time around.
Following the auction of 3.5 GHz spectrum, which concluded back in February, Chilean operators have been busy preparing for 5G rollout. Entel has signed a three-year deal with Ericsson, under which Ericsson will supply 5G technology, including dynamic spectrum sharing and Massive MIMO radios that are designed to operate with mmWave and mid-band (3.5 GHz) spectrum. Meanwhile, Movistar has signed a similar deal with Nokia — Nokia will provide equipment from its AirScale portfolio for the launch of Movistar’s 5G network and to upgrade the operator’s 4G network. In other countries, Opensignal has seen that 5G offers users a greatly improved mobile experience and these moves bring the day forward when Chileans will enjoy the same boost from 5G.
Turning to other news, Claro has bought 2x15 MHz of 3.5 GHz spectrum
from Entel for $10.75 million. Entel needed to sell off some of its 3.5 GHz spectrum as after the auction in February its spectrum holdings in that band exceeded the limit of 105 MHz by 25 MHz. Claro did not succeed in winning any 3.5 GHz spectrum in the auction.
In this report, we’ve analyzed the mobile network experience for Chile’s four national operators, Entel, Movistar, Claro and WOM, over the 90-day period starting May 1, 2021, and ending July 29, 2021.