Belgique: Nul points
Three Denmark and mobilkom austria offer the fastest average download speeds in Europe, with users in Belgium receiving the slowest average speeds, according to estimated figures from ARCchart.
ARCchart has carried out speed and latency measurements of the mobile broadband networks of 94 European operators, finding wide discrepancies in service levels between competing operators in the same country, and also between the national arms of group operators.
ARCchart said it made its tests using a speed test application on the smartphones of tens of thousands of users globally, from whom it has collected millions of readings. Using these readings, ARCchart said it has been able to estimate averages for download speed, upload speed, latency and overall network quality, along with a measure of smartphone penetration.
The European results showed Hutchison (Three) Denmark and Mobilkom in Austria in first and second place, with three Scandinavian countries making it into the top ten, as do Bulgaria and Croatia. Belgium’s networks are the weakest, and the country ranks bottom, with the UK and Germany not far off.
ARCchart appears to illustrate that some animals in the mobile operator world are more equal than others, with, for example, T-Mobile Germany showing the country’s fastest download average of 1,459 Kbps while EPlus manages 649 Kbps. In the UK, Hutchison’s upload average is reported as 646 Kbps, while Orange’s is just 212 Kbps.
Not only that, but some national arms of group companies are delivering a beating to their group partners. For instance, T-Mobile in Germany offers an average download speed of 1.49Mbps, whilst its UK equivalent manages just 676kbps. They are both bested by T-Mobile Slovakia, however, which is delivering an average download speed of 1.7Mbps.