Bangladesh
Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumers' connectivity experiences. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding what happens when people use their mobile and broadband connections in their daily life.
Bangladesh
Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumers' connectivity experiences. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding what happens when people use their mobile and broadband connections in their daily life.
Key Findings
Banglalink wins the Download Speed Experience award
Our Banglalink users saw the fastest average download speeds in Bangladesh, making the operator the outright winner of the Download Speed Experience. It wins with a score of 10 Mbps, 1.2 Mbps ahead of second placed Grameenphone, while Robi and TeleTalk are in third and fourth place, respectively, with scores of 6.8 Mbps and 4.4 Mbps.
Grameenphone users saw the fastest upload speeds
Grameenphone is once again the sole winner of the Upload Speed Experience award. This time it wins with a score of 4.1 Mbps, giving it a lead of 0.7 Mbps over second placed Banglalink’s 3.4 Mbps. Robi is in third place with 2.7 Mbps, while TeleTalk is further behind given its score of 1.4 Mbps.
Banglalink wins the Games Experience and Voice App Experience awards
Our users had their best available experience when playing multiplayer mobile games or using over the top voice apps over cellular connections on Banglalink’s network. The operator is therefore the outright winner of both the Games Experience and Voice App Experience awards. It wins the former with a score of 37.5 points on a 100 point scale and comes top for Voice App Experience with 66.1 points and a lead of 2.4 points over second-placed Grameenphone. In addition, Banglalink shares the third of the experiential metrics — Video Experience — with Grameenphone.
Grameenphone achieves a clean sweep in the Consistency category
Grameenphone wins both the Excellent Consistent Quality and Core Consistency awards outright. This means that it was on Grameenphone’s network that the highest proportion of users’ tests met the minimum recommended performance thresholds for demanding applications (Excellent Consistent Quality) such as completing group video calls as well as the thresholds for less demanding applications (Core Consistent Quality) like web browsing.
Grameenphone users connected to 4G in the most locations
Grameenphone is the outright winner of the 4G Coverage Experience award, given its score of 7.3 point on a 10 point scale, which gives it a lead of 0.6 points over second placed Robi’s 6.7 points. 4G Coverage Experience measures how mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator’s network. 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.
Mobile Experience Awards
Market Overview
Judging by the awards table, the Bangladeshi mobile network experience continues to be a two-horse race between Grameenphone and Banglalink. Grameenphone has again narrowly scooped up the most awards, winning four outright — Upload Speed Experience, 4G Coverage Experience, Excellent Consistent Quality and Core Consistent Quality. It also is a joint winner in three categories: Video Experience (alongside Banglalink), Availability and 4G Availability. In these last two categories it shares the victor’s laurels with both Banglalink and Robi.
Meanwhile, Banglalink wins or ties for first place across all three experiential categories, winning Games Experience and Voice App Experience outright. It also comes top for Download Speed Experience. Neither Robi nor TeleTalk win any awards outright, but Robi is part of the three way ties for Availability and 4G Availability.
In the spectrum auction conducted by the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) in the first quarter of 2022, both Grameenphone and Robi won the rights to use 60 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum. Banglalink and TeleTalk purchased 40 MHz and 30 MHz, respectively, of spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band.
In this report, we have examined the mobile network experience of our users on the four nationwide mobile operators that own their own mobile network infrastructure — Banglalink, Grameenphone, Robi and TeleTalk — over a period of 90 days beginning April 1, 2022, and ending June 29, 2021, to see how they fared. Since the last report, we have added two more awards: Excellent Consistent Quality and Core Consistent Quality.
Overall Experience
National Analysis
Our Banglalink and Grameenphone users had the best available experience in Bangladesh when streaming mobile video over cellular connections, given their statistically tied scores of 28.4-29.8 points on a 100 point scale. As a result, these two operators are joint winners of the Video Experience award. Robi and TeleTalk share last place with scores of 22.5-23.7 points.
Definitions
Opensignal’s Video Experience quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's networks. The metric is based on an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 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 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 — including Full HD (FHD) and 4K / Ultra HD (UHD) — and are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers.
In addition to Video Experience, we report on the following metrics related to video experience:
- 5G Video Experience: The average Video Experience of Opensignal users when they were connected to an operator’s 5G network.
- Video Experience – 5G Users: The average Video Experience of Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription across an operator's networks. It factors in 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G video experience along with the availability of each technology.
- 4G Video Experience: The average Video Experience of Opensignal users on an operator's 4G network.
- 3G Video Experience: The average Video Experience of Opensignal users on an operator’s 3G network.
National Analysis
Banglalink is the sole winner of the Games Experience award. This means that our Banglalink users had the best available experience when playing multiplayer mobile games over cellular connections. The operator wins with a score of 37.5 points on a 100 point scale, while our users on its rivals’ networks did not see any statistically significant differences in their experience. Grameenphone, Robi and TeleTalk are therefore in joint second place with scores in the 33.2-35.1 point range.
Definitions
Opensignal’s Games Experience measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network. Measured on a scale of 0-100, it analyzes how our users’ multiplayer mobile gaming experience is affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter.
Games Experience quantifies the experience when playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on mobile devices connected to servers located around the world. The approach is built on several years of research quantifying the relationship between technical network parameters and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users. These parameters include latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (the proportion of data packets that never reach their destination). Additionally, it considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions. The games tested include some of the most popular real-time multiplayer mobile games (such as Fortnite, Pro Evolution Soccer and Arena of Valor) played around the world.
Calculating Games Experience starts with measuring the end-to-end experience from users’ devices to internet end-points that host real games. The score is then measured on a scale from 0 to 100.
In addition to Games Experience, we report on the following metrics related to games experience:
- 5G Games Experience: The average Games Experience of Opensignal users when they were connected to an operator’s 5G network.
- Games Experience – 5G Users: The average Games Experience of Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription across an operator's networks. It factors in 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G games experience along with the availability of each technology.
- 4G Games Experience: The average Games Experience of Opensignal users on an operator's 4G network.
- 3G Games Experience: The average Games Experience of Opensignal users on an operator's 3G (e.g. UMTS/HSPA or CDMA 1X EV-DO) network.
National Analysis
Our Banglalink users had the best available experience in Bangladesh when using over the top voice apps over cellular connections, given the operator’s score of 66.1 points on a 100 point scale —2.4 points (3.7%) higher than second placed Grameenphone’s 63.7 points. Robi and TeleTalk bring up the rear with statistically tied scores of 61.2-61.3 points.
Definitions
Opensignal's 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 Telecommunication Union (ITU) 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. Voice App Experience for each operator is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100.
In addition to Voice App Experience, we report on the following metrics related to voice app experience:
- 5G Voice App Experience: The average Voice App Experience of Opensignal users when they were connected to an operator’s 5G network.
- Voice App Experience – 5G Users: The average Voice App Experience of Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription across an operator's networks. It factors in 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G voice app experience along with the availability of each technology.
- 4G Voice App Experience: The average Voice App Experience of Opensignal users on an operator's 4G network.
- 3G Voice App Experience: The average Voice App Experience of Opensignal users on an operator's 3G (e.g. UMTS/HSPA or CDMA 1X EV-DO) network.
National Analysis
Banglalink has managed to convert its joint win for Download Speed Experience alongside Grameenphone in our last report, to an outright win. Our Banglalink users saw download speeds that were on average 1.2 Mbps (13.8%) faster than those seen by their Grameenphone counterparts. Robi and TeleTalk bring up the rear with scores of 6.8 Mbps and 4.4 Mbps, respectively.
Definitions
Measured in Mbps, Download Speed Experience represents the typical everyday speeds a user experiences across an operator’s mobile data networks.
In addition to Download Speed Experience, we report on the following metrics related to download speeds:
- 5G Download Speed: The average download speed observed by Opensignal users with active 5G connections.
- Download Speed Experience – 5G Users: The average download speeds experienced by Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription across an operator’s networks. It factors in 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G download speeds along with the availability of each technology.
- 4G Download Speed: The average downlink speed observed by Opensignal users when they were connected to 4G.
- 3G Download Speed: The average downlink speed observed by Opensignal users when they were connected to 3G (e.g. UMTS/HSPA or CDMA 1X EV-DO).
National Analysis
Grameenphone is the outright winner of the Upload Speed Experience awards, as our users on its network observed average upload speeds of 4.1 Mbps — 0.7 Mbps (20.6%) faster than those seen by Banglalink users (3.4 Mbps). Robi and TeleTalk are in third and fourth place, respectively, with score of 2.7 Mbps and 1.4 Mbps.
Definitions
Upload Speed Experience measures the average upload speeds for each operator observed by our users across their mobile data networks. Typically upload speeds are slower than download speeds, as current mobile broadband technologies focus resources on providing the best possible download speed for users consuming content on their devices. As mobile internet trends move away from downloading content to creating content and supporting real-time communications services, upload speeds are becoming more vital and new technologies are emerging that boost upstream capacity.
In addition to Upload Speed Experience, we report on five supporting metrics related to upload speeds:
- 5G Upload Speed: The average upload speed observed by Opensignal users with active 5G connections.
- Upload Speed Experience – 5G Users: The average upload speeds experienced by Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription across an operator’s networks. It factors in 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G upload speeds along with the availability of each technology.
- 4G Upload Speed: The average uplink speed observed by Opensignal users when they were connected to 4G.
- 3G Upload Speed: The average uplink speed observed by Opensignal users when they were connected to 3G (e.g. UMTS/HSPA or CDMA 1X EV-DO).
Coverage
Banglalink
Grameenphone
Robi
TeleTalk
National Analysis
Looking at the proportion of time our users spent connected to a 3G or better signal, they did not observe any statistically significant differences between Banglalink, Grameenphone and Robi. As a result, all three operators are joint winners of the Availability award with scores in the 89.2-91.1% range. TeleTalk is in last place with a score of 79.9 points.
Definitions
Our availability metrics are not a measure of a network’s geographical extent. They won’t tell you whether you are likely to get a signal if you plan to visit a remote rural or nearly uninhabited region. Instead, they measure what proportion of time people have a network connection, in the places they most commonly frequent — something often missed by traditional coverage metrics. Looking at when users have a connection rather than where, provides us with a more precise reflection of the true user experience.
We also keep track of the instances that leave mobile users most frustrated: when there is no signal to connect to at all. The most common dead zones users struggle with occur indoors. As most of our availability data is collected indoors (as that’s where users spend most of their time), we’re particularly astute at detecting areas of zero signal.
Our availability metrics take a user-centric, time-based approach that complements the user-centric and geographical-based methodology used by our reach metrics.
Availability shows the proportion of time all Opensignal users on an operator’s network had either a 3G, 4G or 5G connection.
Map Definition
The coverage maps show the locations where we received measurements from users connecting with 3G or better mobile service. Each map provides an indication of the areas in which it is possible to obtain mobile service from that mobile operator.
National Analysis
Similarly to Availability, Banglalink, Grameenphone and Robi are joint winners of the 4G Availability award given their statistically tied scores, which are in the 78.9-80.7% range. TeleTalk is in last place with a score of 60.6% — this means that on average our 4G users on TeleTalk’s network spent 60.6% of their time with an active 4G connection.
Definitions
Our availability metrics are not a measure of a network’s geographical extent. They won’t tell you whether you are likely to get a signal if you plan to visit a remote rural or nearly uninhabited region. Instead, they measure what proportion of time people have a network connection, in the places they most commonly frequent — something often missed by traditional coverage metrics. Looking at when users have a connection rather than where, provides us with a more precise reflection of the true user experience.
We also keep track of the instances that leave mobile users most frustrated: when there is no signal to connect to at all. The most common dead zones users struggle with occur indoors. As most of our availability data is collected indoors (as that’s where users spend most of their time), we’re particularly astute at detecting areas of zero signal.
Our availability metrics take a user-centric, time-based approach that complements the user-centric and geographical-based methodology used by our reach metrics.
4G Availability shows the proportion of time Opensignal users with a 4G device and a 4G subscription — but have never connected to 5G — had a 4G connection.
Map Definition
The coverage maps show the locations where we received measurements from users connecting with 3G or better mobile service. Each map provides an indication of the areas in which it is possible to obtain mobile service from that mobile operator.
National Analysis
Our Grameenphone users connected to 4G in the most locations on average out of the locations visited by users of all network operators. As a result, Grameenphone is the outright winner of the 4G Coverage Experience award. It wins with a score of 7.3 points on a 10 point scale and a lead of 0.6 points over second placed Robi’s 6.7 points. Banglalink and TeleTalk are in third and fourth place, respectively, with scores of 4.3 and 1.6 points.
Definitions
4G Coverage Experience measures 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.
Map Definition
The coverage maps show the locations where we received measurements from users connecting with 3G or better mobile service. Each map provides an indication of the areas in which it is possible to obtain mobile service from that mobile operator.
Consistency
National Analysis
Grameenphone is the outright winner of the Excellent Consistent Quality award, given its score of 42.4%, which gave it a lead of at least 1.7 percentage points over its rivals. Banglalink is in second place with a score of 40.7%, followed by Robi with 35.1%. TeleTalk is in last place and some way behind its peers with a score of 13.2%.
Definitions
Consistent Quality measures how often users’ experience on a network was sufficient to support common applications’ requirements. It measures download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet loss, time to first byte and the percentage of tests attempted which did not succeed due to a connectivity issue on either the download or server response component.
Full details on how the Consistent Quality metrics — Excellent Consistent Quality and Core Consistent Quality — are calculated can be found here.
Excellent Consistent Quality is the percentage of users’ tests that met the minimum recommended performance thresholds to watch HD video, complete group video conference calls and play games.
National Analysis
As with Excellent Consistent Quality, Grameenphone is the sole winner of the Core Consistent Quality award. It wins the latter by a larger margin, given its lead of 3.5 percentage points over second-placed Banglalink’s score of 61.6 points. As Grameenphone scored 65.1%, only it and Banglalink scored above 60%. Robi is in third place with 57.9%, while TeleTalk brings up the rear with 40.2%.
Definitions
Consistent Quality measures how often users’ experience on a network was sufficient to support common applications’ requirements. It measures download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet loss, time to first byte and the percentage of tests attempted which did not succeed due to a connectivity issue on either the download or server response component.
Full details on how the Consistent Quality metrics — Excellent Consistent Quality and Core Consistent Quality — are calculated can be found here.
Core Consistent Quality is the percentage of users’ tests that met the minimum recommended performance thresholds for lower performance applications including SD video, voice calls and web browsing.
Related Analysis
Our Methodology
Collecting billions of individual measurements daily from over 100 million devices globally, Opensignal independently analyzes mobile and broadband user experience on every major network operator around the globe.
About Opensignal
Opensignal is the leading global provider of independent insights into consumers' connectivity experiences and choice of carrier. Our proprietary insights into mobile and broadband networks give operators the solutions they need to profitably compete and win, from executive level scorecards and public validation to pin-point level engineering analytics and consumer decision dynamics.
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Confidence Intervals
For every metric we calculate statistical confidence intervals indicated on our graphs. When confidence intervals overlap, our measured results are too close to declare a winner. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners.
In our bar graphs we represent confidence intervals as boundaries on either sides of graph bars.
In our supporting-metric charts we show confidence intervals as +/- numerical values.
Why confidence intervals are vital in analyzing mobile network experience