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Our 5G users on Orange saw by far the fastest average 5G download speeds, 48.4% ahead of the 183.8 Mbps seen when using second placed SFR. However, the 5G download speeds on Bouygues and Free Mobile were much slower, with scores of 121.6 Mbps and 98.1 Mbps, respectively.
Orange's score of 18.5 Mbps was narrowly ahead of Bouygues and SFR that scored 16.3 Mbps and 16 Mbps respectively. Free Mobile came last with our users experiencing a much slower 5G Upload Speed of 9 Mbps. All four operators scored much more highly using 5G than the overall Upload Speed Experience scores in our companion France Mobile Network Experience report.
While Bouygues had the highest score of 74.1 on a 100-point scale, it is in a statistical tie with SFR's score of 70.6 because of overlapping confidence intervals. However, Orange narrowly missed out. The top three operators were extremely close with all three scores over 70 points which rated as Fair (65<75). But Free Mobile scored lower with a Poor (40<65) 5G Games Experience score of 63.4.
With scores just over 77 our Bouygues, Orange and SFR users all enjoyed an Excellent experience (75 or above) and as a result the three operators jointly win the first 5G Video Experience award in France. Again, Free Mobile's score lagged with a score of 74.9 which placed in the Very Good category (65<75).
Fifth generation mobile network technology launched in France in late 2020. One year on, we see a fiercely competitive 5G market in Opensignal's first report on the 5G experience. Five of the awards are shared between multiple operators. Only Orange pulls clear of the competition to win both 5G speed awards outright.
It's still early days for 5G with operators continuing to expand their 5G services. While Free Mobile and Bouygues jointly win the 5G Availability award in this report — representing the proportion of time when users had an active 5G connection — their scores were still relatively low at under 15% of the time. It's a similar story on 5G Reach, which represents the share of locations where users have seen 5G services. On a 10-point scale, operator scores range from 2 to 3.4, meaning that in over two thirds of locations our 5G users failed to find a 5G signal.
Looking at a report from Arcep, the telecom regulator, we see further context on the extent of 5G across the country. Free Mobile has deployed a lot of 5G sites using low frequencies — in the 700 MHz band — that is good for coverage but is less ideal for supporting very fast 5G speeds. By comparison, Orange has the majority of its sites supporting the 3.5 GHz mid-band that has higher capacity which helps to explain Orange's success in Opensignal's 5G speed awards.
5G is set to transform the mobile network experience in France over the coming years. Already, we see much faster speeds using 5G and many higher scores for video, games and voice app experience with 5G than the overall experience across all our users.
| 5G Mobile Experience Awards France | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
November 2021,
France Report
|
B
Bouygues
|
F
Free Mobile
|
O
Orange
|
S
SFR
|
5G Availability
| ||||
5G Reach
| ||||
5G Video Experience
| ||||
5G Games Experience
| ||||
5G Voice App Experience
| ||||
5G Download Speed
| ||||
5G Upload Speed
| ||||
|
Mobile Experience Awards Winners
|
November 2021,
France
|
|---|---|
|
5G Download Speed
|
O
Orange
|
|
5G Upload Speed
|
O
Orange
|
|
Mobile Experience Awards Draws
|
November 2021, France
|
|---|---|
|
5G Availability
|
B
Bouygues
F
Free Mobile
|
|
5G Reach
|
B
Bouygues
F
Free Mobile
O
Orange
|
|
5G Video Experience
|
B
Bouygues
O
Orange
S
SFR
|
|
5G Games Experience
|
B
Bouygues
S
SFR
|
|
5G Voice App Experience
|
B
Bouygues
O
Orange
S
SFR
|
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.
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