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Leading global insights company Opensignal has found Optus leads the pack, winning the most categories outright it its latest Mobile Network Experience report.
The bi-annual report measures the performance of mobile network operators Telstra, Optus and Vodafone across four categories: 4G Experience, 5G Experience, Coverage, and Consistency.
Within these categories, there are 14 awards up for grabs. In this report, Optus locked up six awards outright and nabbed two more wins that it shared with Vodafone.
Optus has claimed the top spot for fastest 5G download speeds for the tenth time running. Optus' average 5G download speed was reported as 199.9 Mbps, followed by Telstra at 171.7Mbps, and Vodafone at 161.8Mbps.
Optus' 5G download speeds are slowing down, however. These are the slowest 5G download speeds Opensignal has recorded for the network operator since it started reporting on 5G figures in 2022. In the last report, it came in at 208.4Mbps, making this an 8.5 Mbps drop.
The gap between Optus and Telstra's 5G download speeds is now 28.2Mbps compared to a 33.9Mbps lead in October last year. It's worth noting that Telstra's speeds also slowed down compared to the previous report, down from 174.5Mbps.
When it came to upload speeds, Vodafone secured the awards for both fastest 4G and 5G upload speeds.
Here are each network's results for 4G and 5G download and upload speeds:
| 4G download speed | 4G upload speed | 5G Download speed | 5G Upload speed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Optus | 58.3 | 7.1 | 199.9 | 13.5 |
| Telstra | 51.7 | 6.9 | 171.7 | 13.5 |
| Vodafone | 39.3 | 8.8 | 161.8 | 15.6 |
Optus' network dominated the 4G/5G Video and Games Experience categories. Opensignal scores these categories out of 100 with criteria such as having fast loading times, video quality, and latency — the time it takes for data to travel between the server and your device.
Telstra's strongest performance was for its coverage. It won two Coverage awards for overall and 5G Coverage Experience. It was the sixth time it won these awards back-to-back. These awards are for the largest footprint of geographical coverage within populated areas. Measured on a scale of zero to 10, Telstra scored 9.6 for overall and 8 for 5G Coverage Experience.
While coverage focuses on geographical extent, Opensignal also looks at Time on Network and 5G Availability, which measures the proportion of time people have a network connection in the places they commonly frequent. On these metrics, Optus and Vodafone were joint winners on 99.4% for Time on Network, while Vodafone won outright with a score of 85.7% for 5G Availability.
Vodafone won the award for Consistent Quality (measured as a percentage of tests), scoring 85%, maintaining a slim lead ahead of Optus (on 84.3%). This award looks at whether a provider's network adequately supports common mobile applications at a 'good enough' level for users to be able to perform typical tasks.
Finally, Optus and Vodafone shared a joint win for Reliability Experience with scores of 944 and 945 out of 1,000 — too close for one to win over the other. Telstra scored 937 points. Reliability Experience is scored on signal availability and basic task completion.
You can see the full list of wins in this report here:
To measure the performance of Australian mobile networks, Opensignal relies on data from its own app users. It runs on-device tests from a selection of its users on each mobile network. The data for this report was collected between January 1 and March 31 this year.
Dylan Crismale
Digital Content Editor
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