Spain seems to be leading its way in the 4G LTE speed while U.S. is lagging behind.
OpenSignal, a London based company published its “The State of LTE report” based on its findings on the major 2 criteria : speed and coverage of 4G LTE for different countries. The report was based on its huge data base received from its “crowdsourced sensor network” that is enabled through millions of people downloading its app to their smartphones. OpenSignal gathered a data of about six million users across different countries from November 2014 till January 2015 and based on this data it published its second report. It was found that not all the LTE have the same speed and coverage and that these two keep varying with different countries. As per the report Spain has the fastest average speed in 4G LTE and the fastest overall network with Vodafone ES though Vodafone does not have a good coverage. South Korean networks showed the best performance with good coverage as well as good speed: with regards to coverage the report gave credit to LG U+ in South Korea which offered the most extensive LTE with 99 percent coverage across the nation, while South Korea had the most LTE “time on,” with 95 percent speed rate. OpenSignal’s metric to record LTE coverage is “time on” and it considers the proportion of time a user has access to the 4G network rather than geographic spread. “Coverage is most important where users actually spend their time,” says the report.
The lowest “time on” LTE was recorded by England’s 3 UK , while CricKet USA was the slowest among all the eligible networks. It is important to note that several networks were excluded from the survey because their speed and coverage readings did not provide enough sample size for data comparison. It was found that Vodafone ES from Spain gave the fastest 4G LTE network speed averaging 18 Mbps and Vodafone ES in itself measured a speed of 25.2 Mbps which is the fastest speed of all the eligible networks which was recorded. Saudi Arabia was the slowest country for its 4G LTE speeds and all the 3 networks of this country measured speed below 5 Mbps. A similar report generated last year had an entirely different story to say. Then Australia had the fastest speed which measured 24.5 Mbps. Brazil had overall fastest network with its Claro Brazil giving a speed of 27.8 Mbps however in terms of “time on” its performance was poor, U.S. was the second slowest then and South Korea had best LTE coverage with 91 percent.
OpenSignal has changed its measuring methodology for 2015 however its “time on” method remains the same. As per the report “The best performing U.S. network was T-Mobile, which managed 10Mbps and 76 percent time on.” It was also found that last year U.S. was the second last and this report shows it has moved up in the graph, though it still lags in its speed. The 2015 report shows that in terms of coverage U.S. has shown a good performance and has the sixth ranking on the LTE “time on”.
The 4 G LTE is a growing sector OpenSignal’s survey is definitely helping users to understand the standard of the speed and coverage which they are able to get in their country, though OpenSignal states : “We found that not all LTE networks are created equal, with big differences between countries and networks.”
