Colombia
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.
Colombia
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
National
Movistar and Claro share the winners’ podium for Reliability Experience
Movistar and Claro score highest for Opensignal's new metric, Reliability Experience. Reliability Experience measures the ability of our users to connect to and successfully complete 'uninterrupted' tasks on Internet Service Providers' (ISP) networks. The pair win with identical scores of 482 points on a 100-1000 point scale, around 44 points ahead of closest runner-up ETB.
Movistar’s broadband speeds are the fastest in Colombia
Movistar continues to win both speed awards outright — Download Speed and Upload Speed — with average download speeds of 85.3Mbps and average upload speeds of 57.8Mbps. Movistar’s download and upload scores have seen a boost since the previous report, by about 14Mbps and 7Mbps, respectively.
The most consistent experience is with Movistar and Claro
Movistar joins Claro in first place for Consistent Quality as the pair have statistically tied scores of 68.2-68.5%, and a lead of five percentage points over third-placed Tigo. These scores represent the percentage of users’ tests that have met the minimum recommended performance thresholds to watch HD video, complete group video conference calls and play games.
Movistar wins all awards either jointly or outright
Movistar wins every award for broadband experience, either jointly or outright, after now sharing Consistent Quality with Claro.
Market Overview
This is Opensignal’s second report on the broadband market in Colombia. In the first report, we only included the three largest internet service providers (ISPs), Claro, Tigo and Movistar. This time around, we have analyzed the five largest providers (by number of connections served) to better represent the broadband landscape in the country — Claro, Tigo, Movistar, ETB and DirecTV.
America Movil owned Claro is the largest Colombian provider with around a 37% market share (over 3 million subscriptions), according to data published by the regulator, the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications (MinITC). The provider has an extensive Hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network and in recent years has switched its focus to the deployment of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure. Claro also launched Colombia’s first 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) service in mid-2024.
Tigo (formerly Une EPM Telecomunicaciones) has the second largest share of subscribers, around 17% (1.5 million) — although this number has consistently fallen since December 2022. Since August 2014, Une EPM Telecomunicaciones has been co-owned by state-owned utility firm Empresas Publicas de Medellin and Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular (MIC). As of 2023, EPM is looking to reduce its stake in the joint venture, with Medellín Mayor Federico Gutiérrez Zuluaga submitting a proposal for the total or partial sale of Empresas Publicas de Medellin (EPM)-held shares in Tigo to the City Council in July 2024.
Also around 1.5 million subscribers, Telefonica-backed Movistar is just below Tigo in market share. Movistar offers ADSL/ADSL2+ network coverage in 808 municipalities and FTTH networks in 69 municipalities, including the likes of Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla and Bucaramanga. Movistar has disclosed that 87.1% of its user base (around 1.307 million subscriptions) are connected via FTTH.
The final two providers included in the report are State-backed operator Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogota (ETB) and Pay TV and Internet provider DirecTV. Both ISPs have a sizable FTTH presence in the capital city of Bogota.
National Fixed Broadband Experience
In this report, Opensignal has analyzed the real-world fixed broadband experience of our users across Colombia. To reflect the varying ways in which fixed broadband is used, we have included five different measures of user experience: Consistent Quality, Download Speed, Upload Speed, Video Experience and Reliability Experience.
Consumers often face decisions about choosing specific broadband access technologies offered by their local providers. In this report, we analyze the experience of our users across all of the broadband access delivery technologies used.
Movistar and Claro share the glory for both the Consistent Quality and Reliability Experience awards. The pair share the Consistent Quality with scores of 68.2-68.5% — a lead of five percentage points over third-placed Tigo — and jointly win Reliability Experience with identical scores of 482 points.
Our users on Movistar’s network once again have the fastest average download and upload speeds, meaning Movistar retains its outright wins for both speed awards. ETB is in second place for Upload Speed, 14Mbps below Movistar’s score of 57.8Mbps, and shares second place with Claro for Download Speed.
Lastly, Video Experience is shared between three operators — Claro, Movistar and ETB — scoring 68.6-68.8 points on a 100-point scale. Users on these three networks have a Very Good (68-78) Video Experience and are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling.
In our report, we use real-world experience data collected by our users over the period of 90 days, from 19th April to 17th July 2024.
Overall Experience
Definitions
Broadband Consistent Quality measures how often a network, from the perspective of a single device once connectivity is established, meets the requirements for common applications. Broadband Consistent Quality uses six key performance indicators: download and upload speeds, latency, jitter, packet loss, and time to first byte, setting thresholds appropriate for individual rather than multiple device usage. Metrics represent the percentage of users’ tests meeting these performance thresholds to support activities like watching HD video, completing group video calls, and gaming across all hours of the day.
Definitions
Measured in Mbps, Broadband Download Speed represents the typical everyday speeds a user experiences across a provider’s network.
Definitions
Measured in Mbps, Broadband Upload Speed measures the average upload speeds for each internet service provider observed by our users across their fixed networks. Typically, upload speeds are slower than download speeds, but this often depends on the technology used for broadband connections.
Definitions
Opensignal’s adaptive video experience quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's network. The metric measures users’ adaptive video experience using a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) approach inspired by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) studies which have derived a relationship between technical parameters of adaptive bitrate video streaming and the perceived video experience as reported by real people.
The videos tested are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers and include a wide selection of resolutions that dynamically match the network conditions, available bandwidth and device performance. Resolutions range from 144p to 2160p, which is also called 4K or UHD (Ultra High Definition). The model calculates a MOS score on a 0 to 100 scale by evaluating a number of parameters, including: the time to start playing the video, the quality of the video, the time playing each resolution, and the time spent re-buffering.
Definitions
Opensignal's Broadband Reliability Experience measures the ability of a household to connect to the internet and to successfully complete 'uninterrupted' tasks across multiple devices, encompassing work and recreational activities. While Reliability incorporates and expands upon elements akin to Broadband Consistent Quality, it uniquely includes assessments of initial connectivity and continuous completion of tasks, making it more comprehensive in scenarios involving multiple simultaneous connections.
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