Italy
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.
Italy
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
The most reliable broadband is with Vodafone
Vodafone is the first Italian provider to win Opensignal’s new Reliability Experience award. It does so with a score of 601 points on a 100-1000 point scale and a lead of around 25 points over second-placed WindTre’s 577 points.
TIM users enjoy the best on-demand video streaming experience
Our TIM users have the best experience when streaming on-demand video over fixed broadband connections. TIM wins with a score of 73.9 points on a 100-point scale, giving it a lead of around one point over WindTre’s and Vodafone’s statistically tied scores. All of the analyzed ISPs place in the Very Good (68-78) category, which means that our users are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling.
Sky comes top for the consistency of experience over fiber connections
Sky wins the Consistent Quality award, when assessing our users' experience when connected via FTTH, with 89.9% of our Sky users’ tests passing quality thresholds. Sky leads WindTre and Vodafone — which are statistically tied for second place. Consistent Quality measures whether the network can consistently meet the needs of various demanding common applications used for a range of common tasks for a single device. It uses six key performance indicators: download and upload speeds, latency, jitter, packet loss, and time to first byte.
Regional
Iliad is the most awarded operator in Rome, Milan and Naples
Iliad dominates the broadband experience in Italy’s three largest cities — in Milan and Naples it wins all five awards either jointly or outright. It comes close to doing the same in Rome, but is thwarted by Sky — which wins Consistent Quality outright.
Market Overview
Vodafone is the most awarded operator in terms of the national overall fixed broadband experience. It wins both Consistent Quality and Reliability Experience outright, while being a joint winner for Download Speed and Upload Speed. The only award Vodafone doesn’t win is Video Experience, which is awarded to TIM. Vodafone is also the most awarded operator in our recent report on Italy’s mobile network experience — winning eight out of 15 awards outright and sharing the mobile Video Experience award with Iliad.
In the Fibre Experience category, where experience on fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connections is compared, Sky is the only operator to win an award outright, coming top for Consistent Quality, while TIM and Vodafone collect the most awards — each snapping up three joint wins for Download Speed, Upload Speed and Video Experience.
Across Italy’s three largest cities, the fastest average download speeds were observed by our Iliad users in Milan — an impressive 249.8Mbps.
As of writing, Swisscom’s plan to acquire Vodafone and then merge it with its Fastweb subsidiary has yet to receive approval by Italy’s antitrust authority (AGCM). However, the AGCM has indicated that Swisscom’s proposed remedies should sufficiently address competition concerns arising from the deal. These remedies include offers to give rivals access to Fastweb’s fiber infrastructure and share with them the information needed for there to be a level playing field for public tenders. If Vodafone and Fastweb’s existing subscriber bases were to be combined, the merged entity would be the second largest retail fixed broadband provider by market share after TIM.
The Italian government is looking to test Starlink’s ability to provide fixed broadband services to some remote areas as a way to compensate for delays in fiber rollout plans. It is speaking with regional administrations in the north, center and south of the country. In related news, Italy’s telecom operator association, Asstel, is calling calling for a review of the regulations governing low-earth-orbit satellite broadband operators so that they have to follow the same rules as other operators.
The government is still looking to create a single national fixed network company to avoid unnecessary duplication in capex and fiber rollout. It has stakes in both Open Fiber and FiberCop (formerly TIM’s fixed network division which was sold to a consortium this summer) — but plans to combine them have been discussed since at least 2018.
In this report, Opensignal has analyzed the real-world fixed broadband experience of our users across Italy and then separately across three of its largest cities: Rome, Naples and Milan. 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.
This is the first time that we have included Reliability Experience in a Italy fixed broadband experience report. 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 Experience incorporates and expands upon elements akin to Consistent Quality, it uniquely includes assessments of initial connectivity and continuous completion of tasks, making it more comprehensive in scenarios involving multiple simultaneous connections.
In the national overall award table, we have included the four largest providers by market share according to AGCOM, which together account for 81.4% of the market. For Fiber Experience, we have included the top six providers by FTTH subscriptions, again going by AGCOM data.
With our overall experience awards, we are assessing the real-world experience of our users measured across all broadband technologies. As a consequence, the mix of plans and speed tiers selected by users for any given ISP will influence its scores. Doing so highlights the extent to which they have been able to migrate their users away from legacy technologies and offer high-speed plans at compelling prices.
National Fixed Broadband Experience
Category description:
The experience of our users across all of the broadband access delivery technologies used.
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.
Category description:
The experience of our users who are served by fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) where available from the provider.
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.
City Fixed Broadband Experience
Category description:
The experience of our users across all of the broadband access delivery technologies used.
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Category description:
The experience of our users who are served by fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) where available from the provider.
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