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In our first report on 5G Experience in Switzerland, Sunrise wins both of our 5G speeds awards. Our users on this network enjoyed the fastest average 5G download speeds, clocking at nearly 200 Mbps. Salt and Swisscom are in a statistical tie for second place, at least 35.6 Mbps behind the victorious Sunrise. Sunrise also wins the 5G Upload Speed award, with average upload speeds of 39.3 Mbps experienced by our users. Notably, on all Swiss mobile operators users saw average 5G upload speeds surpass the 30 Mbps milestone.
Opensignal’s 5G Video Experience metric quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's 5G network. The videos tested include a mixture of resolutions and are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers. All Swiss operators placed in the Excellent (75 or above) category, meaning fast loading times and almost non-existent stalling. Salt and Sunrise are in a statistical tie and share the first 5G Video Experience award in Switzerland.
Similarly to the 5G Video Experience award, Salt and Sunrise jointly win two of our other 5G experiential awards — 5G Games Experience and 5G Voice App Experience. The competition for these awards was quite tight, as under four points separated all Swiss operators in both categories. Also, on a 100-point scale all operators scored above 80 points in both 5G Games and 5G Voice App Experience. Opensignal’s 5G Games Experience metric is a measure of how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s 5G network, while 5G Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services.
Swisscom is the first operator to win the 5G Availability award in Switzerland — our users on this network spent 13.3% of their time with an active 5G connection. Swisscom’s lead over second-placed Sunrise was nearly two percentage points, while Salt lagged behind its two competitors with a score of 5%. Opensignal’s 5G Availability shows the proportion of time Opensignal users with a 5G device and subscription had a 5G connection, in the places they most commonly frequent. Swisscom also reigned in the 5G Reach category, with a score of 5.1 points (on a 10-point scale) — 1.9 points ahead of Sunrise. 5G Reach measures how 5G users experience the geographical extent of an operator’s network.
In Opensignal's first 5G Experience Report on Switzerland, Sunrise dominates the awards table. The operator wins both 5G speeds awards outright — 5G Download Speed and 5G Upload Speed — and shares the victory with Salt for the three experiential awards: 5G Video, 5G Games and 5G Voice App Experience. However, Swisscom wins the two measures of the extent of 5G — 5G Availability and 5G Reach — which means our Swisscom users were able to connect to 5G more frequently and in more places than those on its competitors’ networks.
In May 2021, Swisscom renewed its strategic partnership with Ericsson over the next three years, to advance future 5G roll-outs and prepare for the deployment of 5G Standalone network. Both companies started their co-operation in 2015, which led to launching Swisscom’s commercial 5G network in April 2019 — one of the first networks of this kind in Europe. Notably, Swisscom’s competitors went for other vendors to provide their 5G infrastructure. Salt teamed up with Nokia to launch its 5G network and Sunrise selected Huawei. Sunrise and Huawei explore 5G use cases, as both companies partnered with fenaco, Agroscope and the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences to drive 5G-based Smart Farming technologies, i.e. using drones and agricultural robots to control weeds using drones and agricultural robots.
In this report, we examine the 5G experience of our users on the three main mobile network operators in Switzerland: Swisscom, Sunrise and Salt, over the 90 day period beginning May 1, 2021, and ending July 29, 2021, to see how they fared.
| 5G Mobile Experience Awards Switzerland | |||
|---|---|---|---|
September 2021,
Switzerland Report
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S
Salt
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S
Sunrise
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S
Swisscom
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5G Availability
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5G Reach
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5G Video Experience
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5G Games Experience
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5G Voice App Experience
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5G Download Speed
| |||
5G Upload Speed
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Mobile Experience Awards Winners
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September 2021,
Switzerland
|
|---|---|
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5G Availability
|
S
Swisscom
|
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5G Reach
|
S
Swisscom
|
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5G Download Speed
|
S
Sunrise
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5G Upload Speed
|
S
Sunrise
|
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Mobile Experience Awards Draws
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September 2021, Switzerland
|
|---|---|
|
5G Video Experience
|
S
Salt
S
Sunrise
|
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5G Games Experience
|
S
Salt
S
Sunrise
|
|
5G Voice App Experience
|
S
Salt
S
Sunrise
|
In our first report on 5G Experience in Switzerland, Swisscom claims the award for 5G Availability. Our users on this network spent 13.3% of their time, on average, connected to 5G. Swisscom was followed closely by Sunrise, with a score of 11.4% — less than two percentage points behind the winner. Compared to its competitors, Salt’s score of 5% was significantly lower which means our Salt users spent less than half of their time connected to 5G compared to users that connected with Sunrise.
Opensignal's 5G Availability compares the amount of time 5G users spent with an active 5G connection. The higher the 5G Availability percentage, the more time users on a network were actually connected to 5G.
Swisscom also leads in our other measure of 5G networks’ extent, 5G Reach, and wins this award for the first time as well with a score of 5.1 points on the 10 point scale. Again, Swisscom comes ahead of runner-up Sunrise, which scored 3.3 points this time. Similarly to the 5G Availability award, Salt lagged behind both Swisscom and Sunrise — meaning its 5G network our users saw 5G in a lower share of locations using Salt’s network compared with its competitors.
5G Reach represents the proportion of locations where 5G users have connected to 5G out of all the locations those users have visited, on a scale of 0-10. This measure complements our 5G Availability metric which represents the proportion of time 5G users spend connected to 5G.
Salt and Sunrise are in a statistical tie and share the first 5G Video Experience award in Switzerland with scores of 82.1 and 81.4 respectively. Swisscom followed closely, with a score of 78.3 points — 3.1-3.8 points behind the joint winners. It is worth highlighting that all Swiss mobile operators placed in the Excellent (75 or above) category, meaning fast loading times and almost non-existent stalling for our users.
Opensignal’s 5G Video Experience quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's 5G network. 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 from end-user devices and using this ITU-based 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.
There was nothing to separate Salt and Sunrise in 5G Games Experience. Salt and Sunrise jointly win the award with statistically tied scores of 85.4 and 84.4 respectively. Swisscom was not far behind with its score of 82 points. The range of scores from highest to lowest 5G Games Experience score was just 3.5 points on a 100-point scale
Our 5G Games Experience metric measures real-world mobile network conditions to assess the mobile multiplayer games experience perceived by our users on different 5G networks. It analyzes how the multiplayer mobile Games Experience is affected by mobile network conditions including UDP latency, packet loss and jitter. Additionally, it considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games — to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions — such as Battle Royale and MOBA games of which PUBG, Fortnite and Arena of Valor are examples.
As is the case with our other experiential awards — 5G Video and 5G Games Experience — Salt and Sunrise statistically tie and share the 5G Voice App Experience award too. The winning operators were between 1.1 and 2 points ahead of Swisscom’s score. All Swiss players placed in the Good category (80-87), meaning many users were satisfied but some may have experienced minor quality impairments.
Opensignal's 5G 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 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.
Sunrise scooped both our 5G speed awards in our first report on 5G Experience in Switzerland. Our users on Sunrise’s network experienced the fastest average 5G Download Speed of 199 Mbps — nearly hitting the stunning 200 Mbps milestone. Swisscom and Salt were in a statistical tie for second place, with our users on these networks seeing 5G Download Speeds of 163.4 and 147.9 Mbps on average respectively. Notably, our users on all Swiss operators saw average 5G download speeds higher than 140 Mbps.
The 5G Upload Speed award is the second speed award claimed by Sunrise. The operator wins it with average upload speeds of 39.3 Mbps, as experienced by our users — and beats both Swisscom and Salt, who statistically tied for second place. Notably, our users on all Swiss mobile operators saw their average 5G upload speeds surpass the impressive 30 Mbps threshold. Upload speeds are becoming more vital, as mobile internet trends move away from downloading content to creating content and supporting real-time communications services.
Collecting billions of individual measurements daily from over 100 million devices globally, Opensignal independently analyzes mobile user experience on every major network operator around the globe.
Opensignal is the mobile analytics company committed to improving mobile connectivity across the globe. We are the independent authority for understanding the true experience consumers receive on wireless networks.
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