Hong Kong

Three operators jointly win the Video Experience award: 3, CMHK and csl. With statistically tied scores of 68.5, 68 and 69.2 respectively, our users on the three winning operators enjoy a Very Good (65<75) Video Experience. This means users saw generally fast loading times and only occasional stalling but the experience might have been somewhat inconsistent across users and/or video providers/resolutions.

Video Experience quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices using 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, Opensignal directly measures video streams from end-user devices and uses an 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.

SmarTone wins the Games Experience award again, now with a score of 72.2 on a 100-point scale. With scores of 66.9 and 68.7 two operators tie for second place — 3 and CMHK — while csl score 64.1.

Games Experience is a measure of how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator's cellular network. Measured on a scale of 0-100, it analyzes how real-time multiplayer mobile gaming is affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter to determine the impact on gameplay and the overall multiplayer gaming experience. Opensignal's approach is built on several years of research quantifying the relationship between a number of technical network parameters that we measure and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users.

Under three points separates the four operators on Voice App Experience as seen by our users. However, SmarTone again wins the award — this time with a score of 78.5 on a 100-point scale. All four operators placed in the Acceptable category (74<80) meaning users are satisfied. Perceptible call quality impairments were experienced by some users. Short duration of clicking sounds or distortion could be heard, and/or the volume may not have been sufficiently loud. The listener was generally able to comprehend without repetition.

Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services of popular mobile voice apps, examples of which include WeChat, WhatsApp, Skype, Line and Facebook Messenger. It uses 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 from real mobile users and the perceived call quality. Voice App Experience for each operator is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100.

CMHK and csl jointly win the Download Speed Experience award with tied scores of 35.7 Mbps and 33.8 Mbps, respectively. In the last report, csl won this award outright with our users then seeing an average download speed of 29.6 Mbps. But in the last six months our users on all four operators have seen their average download speeds increase.

However, if we examine the experience of our 5G users alone — those mobile users with both a 5G smartphone model and a 5G tariff plan — we see a different result to the winner of the award when we look at all mobile users. Our CMHK 5G users have the fastest overall download speed across all mobile technologies, 4G and 5G, with an average download speed of 109.6 Mbps while our csl 5G users have an overall download speed of 85.7 Mbps.

On Upload Speed Experience, CMHK and SmarTone jointly win the award with scores of 9.3 Mbps and 8.7 Mbps respectively. However, 3 and csl are close behind with scores of 8.1 Mbps and 8.6 Mbps.

But we again see CMHK and SmarTone ahead when we look at 5G users' overall experience, while the result remains a tie between the two operators, the overall average upload speeds are considerably faster. SmarTone 5G users saw overall upload speeds of 19.1 Mbps across all mobile technologies while CMHK 5G users experienced 17.8 Mbps . These results represent the overall experience of just those users with both a 5G smartphone model and a 5G tariff plan.

The time that users are able to connect to 4G or better is very similar across all four operators. The 4G Availability scores range from 93.3% to 95.1%. Three operators jointly win the award — 3, CMHK and csl — but SmarTone is not far behind. With the initial non-standalone access (NSA) type of 5G technology requiring a 4G connection for a smartphone to also connect to 5G, a high 4G Availability score remains important. In effect, 4G is a necessary foundation for enabling the 5G experience.

This time around, our users did not observe any statistically significant difference in terms of the locations where they were able to connect to 4G across Hong Kong's four operators. As a result, 3, CHMK, csl and SmarTone all share the 4G Coverage Experience award. In our previous report, our users reported a three-way tie for first place that excluded 3.

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.

In simple terms, 4G Coverage Experience measures the mobile coverage experience in all the locations that matter most to everyday users — i.e.all the places where they live, work and travel. It considers all the areas that Opensignal users visit, the portion of locations that 4G is available to them, and locations that more users visit have higher importance to them.