Spirent Releases User Experience Study of Britain’s 4G Mobile Services

Sunnyvale, Calif. – August 12, 2014 – Spirent Communications, the leader in user experience analytics for mobile devices and services, has completed a study of the user experience of 4G mobile services in 20 major cities across England, Scotland and Wales. The study, commissioned by Telefonica O2, included over 47,000 calls and 170,000 data tests over a three month period from May to July. Key elements of user experience were measured including call completion, data session completion, web browsing speed and file download/upload speed. All measurements were performed using Spirent’s user experience analytics systems and iPhone 5c devices purchased at retail stores by Spirent. 

Key findings from the study, aggregated across all cities, included: (1) the measured call completion success rate among all operators was comparable, ranging from 98.8% to 99.0%, with no operator exhibiting a statistically relevant difference relative to other operators, (2) the web browsing speeds for Telefonica O2 on the 5 tested websites ranked 1st out of 4 measured networks at an average time of 2.7 seconds, with the lowest ranked network at 3.4 seconds, (3) the file download speeds for Telefonica O2 and one other network were jointly ranked 1st out of 4 measured networks with average speeds of 11.3 Mbps and 11.6 Mbps, respectively, and with the lowest ranked network at 6.4 Mbps (the difference between the top 2 measured networks was not statistically meaningful, leading to a joint ranking), (4) the file upload speeds for Telefonica ranked 1st out of 4 measured networks at an average speed of 5.5 Mbps with the lowest ranked network at 3.0 Mbps, (5) the web browsing success rate for Telefonica O2 ranked 2nd out of 4 measured networks at 97.9%, with the highest ranked network at a 98.6% success rate and the lowest ranked network at 96.4%, (6) the file download success rate for Telefonica O2 ranked 2nd out of 4 measured networks at 98.6%, with the highest ranked network at a 99.5% success rate and the lowest ranked network at 97.4%, (7) the file upload success rate for Telefonica O2 ranked 1st out of 4 measured networks at 99.2%, with the lowest ranked network at 97.6%.

“Our goal is to provide the industry with an independent and accurate view of the user experience,” said Des Owens, General Manager, Service Experience at Spirent. “To ensure accuracy, we only use real, unmodified devices for our user experience measurements – the same devices consumers purchase in retail stores. We measure the key factors that matter to users like the ability to make calls and browse to web sites and we do it all with a statistically rigorous sampling methodology. Our customers appreciate that we don’t just provide independent measurement services – we also give them the ability to perform their own measurements and analysis with our suite of user experience analytics systems.”

Spirent’s user experience analytics systems include: Nomad (for voice services including VoLTE), Datum (for data services), Chromatic (for video calling including VoLTE IR.94 and OTT) and Quantum (for battery life). Customers of Spirent’s user experience analytics services and systems include leading operators in the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America as well as leading device manufacturers worldwide. For more information on Spirent’s user experience analytics, please visit: http://www.spirent.com/Products/User_Experience_Evaluation