Swiss mobile providers perform well

Speed and coverage of mobile telecoms is well above average in Switzerland. Keystone

Speed, availability, network responsiveness: on all counts, the mobile experience in Switzerland is “an excellent one”, according to a new report. But improvements could still be made to advance on the leader board.

This is the verdict published Wednesday May 24 by OpenSignal, a London-based private held company that issues industry reports based on crowdsourced data from worldwide users of its OpenSignal app. The company says it aims to use data to increase transparency in the wireless industry, and to offer unbiased coverage maps.

According to the reportExternal link, the company’s first to directly address Switzerland, the country’s users have a lot to be satisfied with: “fast speeds, highly accessible LTE [wireless] signals and quick network response times” are the norm, the findings show.

“Our users were able to find LTE signals on Salt, Sunrise and Swisscom’s networks in seven of every 10 attempts, and when they did connect they had access to average speeds well over 20 Mbps,” it said. The figure for megabits per second refers to download and upload speeds.

In terms of operators, the report found that Sunrise and Swisscom tied for first place on 4G availability, while Sunrise was a clear winner when it came to download speeds. Swisscom was ahead of the pack on “latency”, a measure of the responsiveness of a network.

Ahead of the global average

By worldwide standards, Switzerland is well above average on speed and availability: Sunrise’s 4G-download speed of 35.3 Mbps, for example, is almost double the global average of 17.4 Mbps. That is according to a global versionExternal link of the company’s network report published last summer.

However, large discrepancies around the world make for difficult comparisons. While South Korea has the fastest overall speed of 41.3 Mbps, over half of all countries surveyed languish at speeds of less than 10 Mbps.

Thus, although Switzerland ranked 16th, ahead of European neighbours France, Germany, and Italy, it still has significant work to do to catch up with frontrunners South Korea and Singapore. Similarly, on coverage of “3G or better”, the Alpine nation came 31st, even with a respectable score of 88% availability.

Conducted in spring 2017, the latest findings represent the experience of over 6,000 mobile users in Switzerland, who signed up to provide data for the study during a period of three months.

swissinfo.ch