Vodafone again wins the umlaut connect Mobile Benchmark in Spain

Vodafone and Orange improved their scores compared to last year’s benchmark – Orange even with a plus of 18 points. Movistar and Yoigo lost a couple of points but still achieve good results. Vodafone and Orange achieved the grade “very good”, followed by Movistar and Yoigo with the grade “good”.

Vodafone did best overall with a lead in the voice and data categories and a score of 913 out of 1,000 points. Also, providing an outlook at the capabilities of 5G connectivity, Vodafone proves that it is well positioned for the future. Orange keeps the second rank with a score of 885 points. Showing an overall “very good“ performance, the operator ranks second in the voice and crowdsourcing disciplines and third by a close margin in the data assessment. With strong data results and an overall good voice score, the largest Spanish operator Movistar ranks third. It achieved even the best result in the crowdsourcing evaluations. Compared to its 2018 score, the Telefónica brand did lose some points, but it managed still to achieve the overall grade “good“ with an overall score of 824 points. Spain‘s smallest operator scores fourth, but still achieves the overall grade “good“ with an overall score of 764 points. In comparison to last year‘s results, Yoigo lost some points. But the operator manages to improve in some areas such as the reliability of data connectivity evaluated in our drivetests on rural roads.

The 2019 umlaut connect Mobile Benchmark in Spain consists of drivetests and walktests conducted from late September and mid October 2019. Four drive test cars together covered 11,570 kilometres, visiting 20 cities and 24 towns. Additionally, a walktest team visited seven larger cities. The areas selected for the 2019 test account for more than 11.7 million people, or roughly 25.2 per cent of the total population of Spain. Additionally, umlaut conducted crowd-based analyses of the Spanish networks which contribute 20 per cent to the end result. They are based on data gathered between mid April and end of September 2019. The methodology of the umlaut connect Mobile Benchmark is the result of more than 15 years of testing mobile networks. Today, network tests are conducted in more than 80 countries. The methodology was carefully designed to evaluate and objectively compare the performance and service quality of mobile networks from the users’ perspective.

Hakan Ekmen, CEO Telecommunication umlaut, explains: “Congratulations to Vodafone, leading in Spain for the fifth time in a row. Orange shows the biggest score improvements this year, ranking second overall. With our new brand umlaut we are also adding something on top: We have measured 5G for the first time in Spain. The results are quite impressive with throughputs above 500 Mbit/s in the downlink and 70 Mbit/s in the uplink. This, I would call really early innovation.”

The umlaut connect Mobile Benchmark is totally independent combining the expertise of umlaut, the industry’s advocate and global authority regarding measuring network performance, with more than 25 years of editorial experience and testing knowledge of connect that is regarded as a leading consumer authority in Europe. The independent benchmark methodology of umlaut assures a fair, transparent and neutral evaluation of the networks under test. The benchmark is positioned to be a unique measure for management and supervisory boards to compare their networks with others, and for customers to get a better understanding of how the different networks perform.