Traditionally, the competition in the Alpine republic takes place at a very high level. This is also true this year – although the scores have not risen compared to last year.

We have almost got used to this in recent years: when it ­comes to the level of points scored, Austrian providers are traditionally well ahead of their counterparts from ­Germany. In principle, this is still true this year – but the score increases achieved by Austria‘s northern neighbour in the meantime make the gap shrink. In comparison, ­­the level of performance in the two Alpine countries has ­remained essentially unchanged – on a very high level.

Most of the general conditions were also unchanged: Austrian customers are still happy about the still significantly ­lower ­tariff level in the Alpine republic compared to Germany. And Austrian customers are still annoyed that their providers charge extra for smartphone use in the non-EU country Switzerland – and sometimes quite expensively, depending on the provider and tariff.

VOICE 

But there is also continuity on the bright side: Since 2018 all three network operators in Austria have been supporting the fast and high-quality voice telephony via VoLTE (Voice over LTE). It is the basis for convincing voice results and predominantly very good measurement results. The average call set-up times of less than one second achieved by ­Magenta in all tested scenarios speak for themselves. 

Although A1 needs a little ­longer to set up a connection, the results are also impressive and quite close to the first-placed provider Magenta, especially in large cities. In the case of Three, setting up a call takes well over 2 seconds on average, but here too, success rates and voice quality are ­quite high. In small towns, Three‘s overall score is even slightly better than the one achieved by A1 – but on the connecting roads the gap between the Hutchison network and the two competitors is ­somewhat more pronounced.

In the walk tests carried out in Austrian trains, the performance level falls back consi­derably. Still, A1 and Three were once again able to sig­nificantly improve in this discipline compared to the results in previous years. And in ­par­ticular the smallest pro­vider, Three, offers railway passengers significantly more stable mobile phone calls than just a year ago.

The data measurements show an overall similar picture as in the voice discipline. Magenta and A1 are in a neck-and-neck race, Three ranks slightly behind but can catch up to the overall field, especially in the rural scenarios. 

In large cities, Magenta and A1 are further ahead – pro­bably not least because of the support of 4CA in their LTE networks (4 Carrier Aggrega­tion: combination of up to four frequency bands). For all three Austrian mobile networks the results of the drive and walk tests already show a respec­table share of samples with 5G reception (see box below).

The high success rates achieved by Magenta and A1 in ­larger cities, smaller towns and on connecting roads are par­ticularly pleasing. Three ­also achieves good values here – ­only for file uploads we see ­some room for improvement. Clear differences can be seen in the top ten per cent of the measured values (so-called P90 ­values) for the data rates: Here, Magenta with more than 475 Mbps is in the top position in the big city drive tests and with even 750 Mbps far ahead in the big city walk tests. A1 achieves around 329 and 387 Mbps ­respectively, and Three follows with around 211 and 246 Mbps. Three also shows potential for improvement in some of the upload measurements.

Entertainment fans will be happy to hear that all three ­providers are performing very well in terms of success rates and video resolution achieved in the tests of YouTube video and live content reception.

Data connections on trains

The otherwise convincing data results are subject to some ­limitations when it comes to mobile internet use on train journeys. Here, the performances ­determined by umlaut correspond in general to the picture that could already be seen in the Voice tests: ­compared to the other usage scenarios, there is still room for improvement in the railways. A comparison with the results of the Swiss providers in this sub-discipline shows that this is not technically im­possible.

And even if the German networks have improved in the railway scenarios this year, the Austrian operators still come out on top. In addition, while the networks in the Alpine republic have ­essentially maintained their previous year‘s results in the other sub-disciplines of the ­data category, all of them have been able to improve signi­ficantly in the field of mobile data com­munication while travelling on railways.