2Degrees rated best NZ mobile network

A survey of the performance of New Zealand’s three mobile networks based on millions of real-world data points gleaned from mobile phones has rated 2Degrees as the best performer.

Tutela assessed the three telcos on five parameters: excellent consistent quality, core consistent quality, download throughput, upload throughput and latency. It rated 2degrees the winner in all categories except download throughput for which Vodafone got the gong.

In Tutela’s methodology an excellent connection is one able to support use cases like 1080p video streaming or multiplayer gaming; a core connection will support streaming standard-definition video and handle things like web browsing or uploading photos to social media.

The report covered both Australia and New Zealand and found Australian networks to be generally better performers than those in New Zealand.

In New Zealand Tutela said Vodafone had a clear advantage in terms of median download speed, with an average of 16.5Mbps 0.6Mbps faster than 2degrees, and notably faster than third-place Spark, which had a median of 12.9Mbps -- the slowest

among all six operators across Australia and New Zealand.

In upload speeds, 2degrees had a clear lead at 7.1Mbps. Spark comes second at 6.1Mbps and Vodafone 5.5 Mbps. However, Tutela said all operators remained comfortably above the 1.5Mbps upload throughput threshold for uses such as HD group video calling.

Tutela also discovered a significant difference in latency between the two countries. In common coverage areas Australian latency averaged 16.4ms compared to 28.5ms in New Zealand. 2Degrees was 26.6ms, Vodafone 27.5ms and Spark 31.2ms.  However, all three had a median performance better than Tutela’s 50ms threshold.

The company says latency performance reflected one-way user datagram protocol latency with tests conducted using the content delivery networks that power many of the world’s most popular consumer applications, and as such the results reflect the end-to-end performance of the networks.

Tutela describes itself as “is an independent crowdsourced data company with a global panel of over 300 million smartphone users [gathering] information on mobile infrastructure and [testing] wireless experience, helping organisations in the mobile industry to understand and improve the world’s networks.”

It collects data and runs network tests via software embedded in a diverse range of over 3000 consumer applications that enable the measurement of real-world quality of experience for mobile users, 24/7. For its ANZ report it claims to have gathered more than 83 billion measurement between April and September 2019.

Its report Australia & New Zealand - State Of Mobile Networks, is available here.