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In this report, our Vodafone users enjoyed the fastest Download Speed Experience of 32.1 Mbps — up 5.2 Mbps from the previous report — resulting in Vodafone placing first, ahead of WindTre’s score of 30.8 Mbps. WindTre and TIM’s scores are statistically unchanged compared to the last report, while Iliad’s score increased by 0.5 Mbps. This is the first time that WindTre fails to win the Download Speed Experience award since we started reporting on the merged operator back in May 2020.
TIM, Vodafone and WindTre jointly win the 4G Coverage Experience award as the three operators all scored 9.7 on a 10-point scale. No single operator in Italy had managed to win outright any of the past 4G Coverage Experience awards as we always observed multiple operators statistically tied for first place. In the last report, TIM and Vodafone shared the award with a similar score of 9.6 points, while WindTre followed behind at 9.5 points. 4G Coverage Experience measures how mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator’s network by analyzing the locations where customers of a network operator received a 4G signal relative to the locations visited by users of all network operators.
WindTre maintains a presence in the national awards table by winning its fourth Upload Speed Experience award in a row, despite losing the Download Speed Experience award to Vodafone. But Vodafone has made significant improvements in the past year, as our users’ average upload speeds on its network have risen from 7.1 Mbps in November 2020 to 9 Mbps in our previous report, and to 10.2 Mbps this time. By comparison, WindTre’s score increased from 9.9 Mbps in the Opensignal report a year ago to 10.5 Mbps six months ago. Since then growth has stalled and its score is now statistically unchanged at 10.6 Mbps. If all of these trends continue Vodafone has a good chance of claiming the Upload Speed Experience award in the next report.
Once again, Vodafone claims victory in all three experiential awards that look at video, multiplayer gaming and voice app communication. Despite all four operators seeing their scores in Video Experience, Games Experience and Voice App Experience decline slightly, Vodafone increased its lead in all three categories as its users saw the smallest change in their experience.
In our May report, we observed all four operators top the 90% mark in 4G Availability for the first time, as Iliad was the last operator to achieve this feat in Italy. This time Iliad, TIM and WindTre’s scores all fall short of the 90% mark, as they reached 81.9%, 87% and 86.4% respectively. Vodafone was the exception, as the operator wins the award with a score of 95.6% — a 0.4 percentage points decrease since our last report compared to the 4.5-8.3 percentage points drops we observed on Iliad, TIM and WindTre.
In the past few years, we have seen multiple operators in Italy fighting for dominance in the Opensignal mobile experience awards table. TIM was the dominant player in May 2019 when it won all awards except for 4G Availability, which was claimed by Vodafone. In the next report Vodafone and Wind gained some ground by forcing TIM into multiple ties. Then, the launch of WindTre in early 2020 completely changed the shape of the awards table as we saw the newly merged operator fighting with Vodafone for dominance while TIM was relegated to sharing victory in a single category. This mostly two-sided contest between Vodafone and WindTre continued throughout 2020, but then in 2021 Vodafone made gains across several categories while WindTre’s improvements were modest by comparison. This time our awards table shows Vodafone having a clearly dominant position on Italy’s mobile experience landscape as it wins five out of seven awards outright, while sharing a sixth.
Vodafone has increased its lead in Video Experience, Games Experience, Voice App Experience and 4G Availability, and now it wins outright Download Speed Experience. Vodafone also shares 4G Coverage Experience with TIM and WindTre, while dramatically reducing its gap from WindTre in Upload Speed Experience, which remains the only award that Vodafone has never won.
Italy’s four operators have seen their scores in Video Experience, Games Experience, Voice App Experience and 4G Availability diminish slightly since our previous report to Vodafone’s advantage, as it sustained the smallest declines in all four measures. It is not uncommon to see such falls in mobile experience scores. Often, we see a seasonal effect on the mobile experience in Italy and other countries as mobile users spend more time outdoors in different, more rural, parts of the country during the warmer months.
Italian mobile operators continue to roll out their 5G networks. WindTre reported it now covers more than 95% of the population with 5G using Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) technology that enables it to operate with 4G and 5G simultaneously, while covering 40.6% of the population with its 3.7 GHz spectrum band.
Vodafone recently announced that it will have 5G services in 50 to 60 cities by the end of 2021, up from 25 cities in October. TIM previously reported it will expand its 5G offering to more than 20 cities by the year’s end, while Iliad’s 5G is now available in areas of 27 cities.
In this report, we've analyzed the mobile network experience of Italy's four national operators — Iliad, TIM, Vodafone and WindTre — over a period of 90 days beginning on July 1 and ending on September 28, 2021, to see how they fared. Alongside the national analysis, we've also measured our users' experience in six macro regions. We have also published a companion report — Italy 5G Experience Report — which analyzes the experience of our 5G users when connected to 5G.
This report includes the overall experience for all smartphone users, but we also publish supporting metrics for 5G users' experience. The difference is that these 5G user results reflect the overall experience across all mobile technologies — 3G, 4G and 5G — of 5G users alone, while the overall results are the average scores across all smartphone users, whether or not they have 5G.
| Mobile Experience Awards Italy | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
November 2021,
Italy Report
|
I
Iliad
|
T
TIM
|
V
Vodafone
|
W
WindTre
|
Video Experience
| ||||
Games Experience
| ||||
Voice App Experience
| ||||
Download Speed Experience
| ||||
Upload Speed Experience
| ||||
4G Availability
| ||||
4G Coverage Experience
| ||||
|
Mobile Experience Awards Winners
|
November 2021,
Italy
|
|---|---|
|
Video Experience
|
V
Vodafone
|
|
Games Experience
|
V
Vodafone
|
|
Voice App Experience
|
V
Vodafone
|
|
Download Speed Experience
|
V
Vodafone
|
|
Upload Speed Experience
|
W
WindTre
|
|
4G Availability
|
V
Vodafone
|
|
Mobile Experience Awards Draws
|
November 2021, Italy
|
|---|---|
|
4G Coverage Experience
|
T
TIM
V
Vodafone
W
WindTre
|
This is the second report in a row that Vodafone has won the Video Experience award. Vodafone’s score this time is 68.8 points on a 100-point scale, which is 3.2 points lower than we observed in the previous report, but it is 0.7 points above second-placed WindTre. Our users on WindTre, Iliad and TIM saw lower scores of 68.1, 66 and 65.7 points, having decreased by 3.6-4.5 points from last time. All four operators placed in the Very Good (65-75) category.
|
Video Experience
Additional Metrics |
I
Iliad
|
T
TIM
|
V
Vodafone
|
W
WindTre
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in 0-100 points | ||||
|
Video Experience – 5G Users
| 70.2 (± 0.82) | 71.4 (± 0.69) | 73.5 (± 0.48) | 72.5 (± 0.33) |
| Video Experience – 5G Users | in 0-100 points |
|
I
Iliad
|
70 (± 0.82) |
|
T
TIM
|
71 (± 0.69) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
74 (± 0.48) |
|
W
WindTre
|
72 (± 0.33) |
Opensignal’s Video Experience quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's networks. To calculate video experience, we are directly measuring video streams from end-user devices and using an ITU-based approach to quantify users’ 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.
Vodafone wins the Games Experience award with a score of 67 points, ahead of TIM, WindTre and Iliad scores of 63.5, 59.5 and 58 points, respectively. All four operators saw their scores decrease compared to our previous report. Iliad’s score dropped by 7.1 points, TIM and WindTre both saw declines of six points while Vodafone sustained the smallest decrease of 4.3 points, which allowed it to remain in the Fair category (65-75) while its three competitors obtained Poor ratings (40-65).
|
Games Experience
Additional Metrics |
I
Iliad
|
T
TIM
|
V
Vodafone
|
W
WindTre
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in 0-100 points | ||||
|
Games Experience – 5G Users
| 63.9 (± 1.13) | 69.5 (± 0.92) | 71.6 (± 0.72) | 63.7 (± 0.57) |
| Games Experience – 5G Users | in 0-100 points |
|
I
Iliad
|
64 (± 1.13) |
|
T
TIM
|
70 (± 0.92) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
72 (± 0.72) |
|
W
WindTre
|
64 (± 0.57) |
Opensignal’s Games Experience is a measure of how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network. Measured on a scale of 0-100, it analyzes how the multiplayer mobile gaming experience is affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter.
Vodafone is the sole winner of the Voice App Experience award for the fourth time in a row, on this occasion with a score of 77.7 points, ahead of TIM, Iliad and WindTre with scores of 76.8, 76.3 and 76.1 points, respectively. Vodafone’s lead increased from 0.3 points to 0.9 points. While all operators saw slight declines to their Voice App Experience scores, Vodafone sustained the smallest decline of two points since our previous report, compared with declines of 2.6-3.1 points for its three competitors.
|
Voice App Experience
Additional Metrics |
I
Iliad
|
T
TIM
|
V
Vodafone
|
W
WindTre
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in 0-100 points | ||||
|
Voice App Experience – 5G Users
| 78.5 (± 0.47) | 78.9 (± 0.44) | 79.4 (± 0.29) | 77.0 (± 0.25) |
| Voice App Experience – 5G Users | in 0-100 points |
|
I
Iliad
|
78 (± 0.47) |
|
T
TIM
|
79 (± 0.44) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
79 (± 0.29) |
|
W
WindTre
|
77 (± 0.25) |
Opensignal's Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — for example using apps such as WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger — using a model derived from an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approach for quantifying overall voice call quality based on a range of calibrated technical parameters. This model characterizes the exact relationship between real-world technical measurements and users’ perceived call quality. Voice App Experience for each operator is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100.
Vodafone shows the largest improvement in download speeds among the Italian operators — 5.2 Mbps (19.5%) — and jumps ahead of WindTre to win the Download Speed Experience award with a score of 32.1 Mbps. WindTre and TIM scores are statistically unchanged at 30.8 Mbps and 24.6 Mbps respectively, while our Iliad users saw their average download speeds improve by 0.5 Mbps compared to our previous report to reach 27.7 Mbps.
Looking at the overall speeds as experienced by our 5G users, we saw a different story with our TIM 5G users observing the fastest average speeds of 81.1 Mbps, followed by Vodafone, Iliad and WindTre with scores of 70.3 Mbps, 60.1 Mbps and 55.8 Mbps, respectively. These 5G user overall download speeds represent the average speed across all generations of mobile technology and the amount of time 5G users spend connected to each generation. The 5G users analyzed here have both a 5G smartphone model and a 5G tariff plan.
|
Download Speed Experience
Additional Metrics |
I
Iliad
|
T
TIM
|
V
Vodafone
|
W
WindTre
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in Mbps | ||||
|
Download Speed Experience – 5G Users
| 60.1 (± 1.61) | 81.1 (± 3.76) | 70.3 (± 2.21) | 55.8 (± 0.86) |
| Download Speed Experience – 5G Users | in Mbps |
|
I
Iliad
|
60 (± 1.61) |
|
T
TIM
|
81 (± 3.76) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
70 (± 2.21) |
|
W
WindTre
|
56 (± 0.86) |
WindTre wins the Upload Speed Experience award with a score of 10.6 Mbps which is statistically unchanged compared to our previous report. Vodafone continues to make impressive gains in this category, this time recording a 1.2 Mbps (13.5%) improvement after seeing its score increase by 1.8 Mbps (25.7%) last time, meaning it has now achieved a two-digit score of 10.2 Mbps — just 0.4 Mbps behind WindTre. TIM and Iliad follow behind with their respective scores of 8.7 Mbps and 6.7 Mbps. While TIM’s score this time is statistically unchanged compared to the previous report, Iliad’s score has suffered a slight decrease of 0.2 Mbps.
When we focus on just our 5G users’ overall upload speeds on the four operators, we see a larger gap between WindTre and Vodafone, but this time WindTre’s score is statistically tied with TIM. In fact, our 5G users on both WindTre and TIM on average experienced overall upload speeds of 12.4 Mbps across all mobile network technology generations, compared to the 11.5 Mbps and 7.5 Mbps that our 5G users experienced on Vodafone and Iliad, respectively.
|
Upload Speed Experience
Additional Metrics |
I
Iliad
|
T
TIM
|
V
Vodafone
|
W
WindTre
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| in Mbps | ||||
|
Upload Speed Experience – 5G Users
| 7.5 (± 0.22) | 12.4 (± 0.43) | 11.5 (± 0.26) | 12.4 (± 0.22) |
| Upload Speed Experience – 5G Users | in Mbps |
|
I
Iliad
|
7 (± 0.22) |
|
T
TIM
|
12 (± 0.43) |
|
V
Vodafone
|
11 (± 0.26) |
|
W
WindTre
|
12 (± 0.22) |
Vodafone maintains a clear victory in 4G Availability, with our users on its network spending 95.6% of their time with a 4G or better connection — and a 8.6 percentage points lead over second-placed TIM. While in the previous report we observed all four operators top the 90% mark in 4G Availability for the first time — as Iliad was the last operator to achieve this feat in Italy — this time Iliad, TIM and WindTre’s scores all fall short of the 90% mark. In fact, all four Italian operators experienced declines in their 4G Availability scores but while Vodafone saw a 0.4 percentage points decrease since our last report, we observed 4.5-8.3 percentage points drops on its three competitors.
All four operators have seen their 4G Coverage Experience scores increase since the last report. Iliad showed the largest improvement of 0.4 points, although it is 0.8 points behind the joint winners — TIM, Vodafone and WindTre — which all scored 9.7 points (on a scale of 0-10). No single operator in Italy had managed to win outright any of the past 4G Coverage Experience awards as we always observed multiple operators statistically tied in first place.
Opensignal's 4G Coverage Experience is a measure of how Opensignal's users 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 Opensignal users of all network operators.
In our analysis of Italy's six macro regions we saw Vodafone win the lion’s share of the regional awards as the operator outmatched its competitors in most categories. Out of the 36 awards that were up for the taking in total, Vodafone wins 27 awards outright, while sharing victory in other five awards. WindTre wins four awards outright, while sharing three with Vodafone. This time TIM’s presence in our regional awards table consists of only two shared victories with Vodafone in Voice App Experience. By comparison, in our previous report we saw fierce competition for the regional awards as Vodafone and WindTre won 16 awards and 13 awards outright, while TIM featured as the sole winner in one award.
Vodafone wins Video Experience awards outright in Central, Sardinia, Sicily and South, while WindTre wins in North East and North West. Despite Vodafone winning the Video Experience award at the national level and collecting most of the regional awards, it was WindTre that recorded the highest Video Experience scores — 70.9 and 70.8 points, in the North East and North West regions respectively.
Vodafone wins all Games Experience regional awards outright, and is the sole winner of four Voice App Experience awards while sharing the prize with TIM in the remaining two regions — North West and Sardinia. We observed the highest Games Experience scores on Vodafone’s network in the North West and North East where the operator scored 72.5 points and 71.9 points, respectively.
Vodafone wins all six regional 4G Availability awards and was the only operator to exceed the 95% mark in 4G Availability, as it topped that threshold across all geographies except for the Central region where it scored 94.5%. All of Iliad, TIM and WindTre’s 4G Availability scores were below the 90% mark. Iliad’s 4G Availability ranged between 80.1% and 82.5%, TIM’s scores were between 84.7% and 88.7%, while our WindTre users spent between 83.8% and 87.9% of their time with a 4G or better connection.
Vodafone’s big strides in both Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience that we have observed nationally have carried through into the regional results. While in our previous report WindTre won outright 11 out of the total 12 awards available across Download Speed Experience and Upload Speed Experience, this time Vodafone wins seven awards outright, while sharing the award with WindTre three times. WindTre now wins outright only two of the regional speed awards — Upload Speed Experience in North East and North West.
We recorded the fastest Download Speed Experience in the North East where Vodafone and WindTre had statistically tied scores of 38.8 Mbps and 38.6 Mbps, respectively. Iliad’s highest score was also in the North East — 32.7 Mbps — while our TIM users enjoyed the fastest download speeds in the North West — 30.2 Mbps. Also, we saw the fastest Upload Speed Experience in the two Northern regions as WindTre scored 12 Mbps in both the North East and North West. Vodafone and Iliad saw their fastest average speed in the North East — 10.8 Mbps and 7.2 Mbps, respectively — while our TIM users enjoyed the fastest upload speeds in the North West (10.4 Mbps).
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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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