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.
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.
After sharing the Download Speed Experience award with NTT docomo in the previous report, au successfully breaks out of the statistical tie and claims the award all to itself with a score of 50.3Mbps. However, our users on Rakuten Mobile have enjoyed the biggest increase in average overall download speeds of 7.5Mbps.
Rakuten Mobile is a double winner for 5G speeds this time around. On top of keeping the 5G Upload Speed in a firm grip, Rakuten Mobile claims the 5G Download Speed award with a score of 214.5Mbps. It does so due to an impressive boost of 33.6Mbps since the previous report.
SoftBank is the sole winner of Consistent Quality for the second consecutive time with a score of 84.3%, beating Rakuten Mobile by 0.9 percentage points. The operator also holds its 5G awards in a firm grip, as it is the sole winner of 5G Video Experience, 5G Live Video Experience and 5G Games Experience, while it also shares the 5G Voice App Experience award with au.
Rakuten Mobile snatches two overall experiential awards from its competitors this time around. It pulls ahead of the previous winner SoftBank for Games Experience, winning the award outright with a score of 84.2 points on a 100-point scale. Rakuten Mobile also overtakes NTT docomo for Voice App Experience.
NTT Docomo remains the sole winner of the Availability award, with a score of 99.7%, which represents the proportion of time Opensignal users spend with a 5G, 4G or 3G mobile signal. It also wins 5G Coverage Experience for the second time in a row, remaining the only recipient of this award since Opensignal introduced it in the previous report.
Rakuten Mobile wins 29 awards outright and 37 jointly across four sections of regional awards, with the majority of its haul coming from the overall regional awards. SoftBank ends with 19 sole and 42 shared victories, the bulk of which comes from the 5G section. In Kinki, our au users enjoy the fastest Download Speed Experience in Japan (56.8Mbps), while our SoftBank 5G users spend the highest proportion of time connected to 5G services (16.4%). Meanwhile, our Rakuten Mobile users in Shikoku enjoy the most consistent quality of services across Japan (86.7%).
We see numerous changes In Opensignal's latest Japan Mobile Network Experience report. Rakuten Mobile catches up with SoftBank in the number of awards won, with both operators winning seven awards each, either outright or jointly. However, Rakuten Mobile has five outright wins to its name, while SoftBank has four. Thanks to the improvement in its network experience, Rakuten Mobile overtakes its competitors for Games Experience, Voice App Experience, and 5G Download Speed. SoftBank claims 5G Live Video Experience all to itself this time around. While au didn’t see any outright wins in the previous report, it takes home Download Speed Experience this time, along with four shared victories. NTT docomo keeps its two Coverage awards in a firm grip but loses its grasp on awards in other categories.
Open RAN and virtualized RAN are the hottest topics in Japan, as mobile operators are focused on deploying 5G services using these technologies. In partnership with Samsung, au launched its 5G standalone access Open RAN powered by vRAN, claiming it to be the first deployment of this kind in the world. Rakuten Mobile announced that it successfully secured ministerial approval to expand its mobile services in the 700MHz band and will cooperate with Nokia to deploy a fully virtualized, cloud-native network compatible with Open RAN, that uses the newly acquired spectrum assets. Meanwhile, NTT docomo has partnered with Amazon Web Services to commercially deploy its nationwide 5G Open RAN network.
In this report we examine the mobile network experience of the four main mobile network operators in Japan — au, NTT docomo, Rakuten Mobile and SoftBank — over 90 days starting on December 01, 2023, to see how they fared.
In the previous report, au and SoftBank were joint winners for Video Experience. This time, Rakuten Mobile jumps on the winners’ podium as well and as a result, the three operators now share the Video Experience award, with statistically tied scores of 71-71.4 points on a 100-point scale.
All Japan’s national operators rate as Very Good (68-78) — which means our users are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling.
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:
SoftBank slips off the winners’ podium for Live Video Experience, leaving au and Rakuten Mobile to share the award with statistically tied scores of 65.5-65.8 points on a 100-point scale. All four operators in Japan place in the Excellent (58 or above) category — our users are, on average, able to stream video at least at 1080p with low loading times, little stalling and a satisfactory live offset.
Operators’ Live Video Experience scores are determined using a range of measures that impact users’ perceived live streaming viewing experience, including picture quality, video loading time, and stall rate, but also live playback offset — the time difference between real-time and the current playback position a viewer sees.
Unlike Video Experience, which represents on-demand video streams, Live Video Experience quantifies live video streaming used for current events. For example when users watch live sports, game streams, music concerts, or news where the event is happening at that moment in time.
Opensignal’s Live Video Experience quantifies the quality of real-time video streamed to mobile devices by measuring video streams over an operator's network. The metric extends the existing International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approach used for Opensignal's on-demand Video Experience metric, built upon detailed studies which have derived a relationship between technical parameters, including live playback offset, picture quality, video loading time and stall rate, with the perceived live video experience as reported by real people. To calculate live video experience, we are directly measuring live video streams from end-user devices and using this extension of ITU's approach to quantify the overall live 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.
Due to an increase in its score of 3.7 points, Rakuten Mobile pulls ahead of the previous winner SoftBank and is now the sole winner of Games Experience with a score of 84.2 points on a 100-point scale.
All four operators achieve a Good (75-85) rating, Most users deem the experience acceptable and do not experience a delay between their actions and the game.
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:
NTT docomo won Voice App Experience outright in the previous report — but this time, Rakuten Mobile overtakes its competitor and claims the award all to itself, with a score of 83.1 points on a 100-point scale. All operators place in the Good (80-87) category — many users are satisfied but some experience minor quality impairments.
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:
After sharing the Download Speed Experience award with NTT docomo in the previous report, au successfully breaks out of the statistical tie and wins the award outright with a score of 50.3Mbps
Our users on Rakuten Mobile have enjoyed the biggest boost in average overall download speeds of 7.5Mbps and as a result, Rakuten Mobile moves to third place, ahead of SoftBank.
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:
Rakuten Mobile remains the sole winner of Upload Speed Experience with a score of 19.5Mbps. It maintains a stunning lead over its competitors, with a score more than twice as high as second-placed SoftBank’s 8.9Mbps.
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:
SoftBank keeps the 5G Video Experience award in a firm grip, with a score of 77.5 points on a 100-point scale. The 5G Video Experience Scores in Japan are some of the highest we see in the world and all four mobile operators in Japan place in the Very Good (68-78) category. This means our users are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling when connected to 5G.
At these high levels of 5G Video Experience several factors can significantly impact the final results — such as device mix, device settings, and operators’ to balance battery life, data consumption, and video performance.
5G Video Experience scores account for adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR), a technology that allows Opensignal to accurately represent users' real video experience including video streams up to 4K quality.
5G Video Experience quantifies the quality of mobile video experienced by Opensignal users on real-world video streams when they were connected to 5G. 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 5G Video Experience, we are directly measuring video streams from end-user devices and using this ITU approach to quantify the video experience observed by our users on each operator’s 5G network 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 the previous report, au and SoftBank were the first recipients of the 5G Live Video Experience award. This time, SoftBank edges out au for the top spot and becomes the first outright winner of this award, with a score of 72.6 points on a 100-point scale. All Japanese operators rate as Excellent (58 or above). This means our users are, on average, able to stream video at least at 1080p with low loading times, little stalling, and a satisfactory live offset when connected to 5G.
Operators’ 5G Live Video Experience scores are determined using a range of measures that impact users’ perceived live streaming viewing experience, including picture quality, video loading time, and stall rate, but also live playback offset — the time difference between real-time and the current playback position a viewer sees.
Unlike 5G Video Experience, which represents on-demand video streams, 5G Live Video Experience quantifies live video streaming used for current events. For example when users watch live sports, game streams, music concerts, or news where the event is happening at that moment in time.
Opensignal’s Live Video Experience quantifies the quality of real-time video streamed to mobile devices by measuring video streams over an operator's network. The metric extends the existing International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approach used for Opensignal's on-demand Video Experience metric, built upon detailed studies which have derived a relationship between technical parameters, including live playback offset, picture quality, video loading time and stall rate, with the perceived live video experience as reported by real people. To calculate live video experience, we are directly measuring live video streams from end-user devices and using this extension of ITU's approach to quantify the overall live 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.
5G Live Video Experience quantifies the quality of mobile video experienced by Opensignal users on real-world live video streams when they were connected to 5G.
SoftBank retains the 5G Games Experience award with a score of 90.3 points on a 100-point scale. Along with au, it rates as Excellent (85 or above) for 5G gaming experience. This means nearly all respondents feel like they have control over the game, they receive immediate feedback on their actions and there is not a noticeable delay in almost all cases when connected to 5G. Meanwhile, NTT docomo and Rakuten Mobile place in the category below — Good (75-85).
5G Games Experience measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator's 5G network. It analyzes how our users’ multiplayer mobile gaming experience was affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter. 5G Games Experience for each operator is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100.
5G 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 5G Games Experience starts with measuring the end-to-end experience from users’ devices to internet end-points that host real games.
SoftBank loses the sole claim on the 5G Voice App Experience award, as au joins it on the winners’ podium, with statistically tied scores of 84.3-84.4 on a 100-point scale. All four national operators in Japan achieve the Good (80-87) rating for 5G voice app services. This means that many users are satisfied, but some experience minor quality impairments.
5G Voice App Experience quantifies the experience of Opensignal users when using over-the-top voice apps — such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger — on an operator’s 5G network. It uses 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. 5G Voice App Experience for each operator is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100.
After an impressive increase of 33.6Mbps since the previous report, Rakuten Mobile breaks out of a statistical tie it was in with NTT docomo and is now the sole winner of 5G Download Speed with a score of 214.5Mbps — 28.7% faster than the runner-up NTT docomo.
5G Download Speed shows the average download speed experienced by Opensignal users across an operator’s 5G network. 5G Download Speed for each operator is calculated in Mbps (Megabits per second).
On top of winning 5G Download Speed this time around, Rakuten Mobile defends the 5G Upload Speed award with a score of 29.5Mbps — 44.4% faster than second-placed SoftBank.
5G Upload Speed measures the average upload speeds experienced by Opensignal users across an operator’s 5G network. 5G Upload Speed for each operator is calculated in Mbps (Megabits per second).
NTT docomo wins the 5G Coverage Experience award outright for the second time in a row, with a score of 3.8 points on a 10-point scale. All Japanese operators have seen increases in their scores — NTT docomo and au by 0.4 points each, while SoftBank and Rakuten Mobile — by 0.3 points each.
The Opensignal Coverage Experience metric measures the extent of mobile networks in the places people live, work and travel. The metric represents the experience users receive as they travel around areas where they would reasonably expect to find coverage.
Traditional coverage metrics typically estimate either a percentage of land area covered, or a percentage of population covered; often neither will be an accurate measurement of the true user expectation and experience. In many markets there are areas where neither population density nor geographic area reflect the importance of coverage to users. For example, in a large mountain range most users will not expect coverage in the wilderness, but poor coverage in the relatively small area of a ski resort is critical for the enjoyment of a holiday. Estimates based purely on population give undue significance to coverage in the most densely populated areas.
Coverage Experience measures geographic coverage of populated areas and therefore more accurately reflects the coverage expectations and experience of typical users. It can give a result that is somewhat different to traditional estimates based on either geographic or population measures. The metric uses a scale from 0 to 10.
5G Coverage Experience shows the proportion of places Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription had an active 5G connection.
NTT Docomo remains the sole winner of the Availability award, with a score of 99.7%, which represents the proportion of time Opensignal users spend with a 5G, 4G or 3G mobile signal. Due to an increase in its score of 0.3 percentage points, Rakuten Mobile moves from fourth place to jointly sharing the second spot with au and SoftBank.
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.
For the second report in a row, au and SoftBank jointly win 5G Availability, this time with statistically tied scores of 10-10.2%. This means, our 5G users spend around 10% of their time with an active 5G connection on the winners’ networks. However, it is Rakuten Mobile that sees the highest increase in its 5G Availability score among Japanese operators, of 2.2 percentage points.
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.
5G Availability shows the proportion of time Opensignal users with a 5G device and a 5G subscription had an active 5G connection.
SoftBank is the sole winner of Consistent Quality for the second consecutive time with a score of 84.3%, beating Rakuten Mobile by 0.9 percentage points.
This metric measures if the network is sufficient to support common mobile application requirements at a level that is ‘good enough’ for users to maintain (or complete) various typical demanding tasks on their devices. It assesses a number of experience indicators such as download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet loss, and time to first byte.
Consistent Quality measures if the network is sufficient to support common mobile application requirements at a level that is ‘good enough’ for users to maintain (or complete) various typical tasks on their devices.
We combine different experience indicators such as download speed, upload speed, latency, jitter, packet discard, and time to first byte to calculate Consistent Quality. These components are evaluated against thresholds recommended by various more demanding common applications used for a range of common tasks.
To calculate the metric value, the proportion of tests that pass the requirements of Consistent Quality is multiplied by the test success ratio, which is the proportion of completed tests to all tests conducted. Tests that pass indicate that activities such as video calling, uploading an image to social media, or using smart home applications will be possible without noticeable lag or slowdown.