VOICE 

It is still true: Mobile telephony must function reliably when needed and in the best voice quality. That is why voice measurements account for 30 per cent of our overall rating.

With the current network implementa­tions, even if a smartphone has a connection to 5G, it switches back to ­VoLTE (“Voice over LTE“) and thus to 4G when making phone calls. So it is a good thing that all German mobile network operators –and incidentally also their counterparts in Austria and Switzerland – now fully support this LTE-based telephony in high quality.

Our candidates thus achieve convincingy short call set-up times. In the Telekom and ­Vodafone networks, these set-tip times are quite close to one second, and in the Tele­fónica network, they are under two seconds in all test sce­narios except for the railways. In the inner-city walktests, the O2 network even catches up closely with the other con­tenders – here, all three network operators reach a very high level. 

The success rates for establishing voice connections are ­also overall very good. Only when trying to make calls on connecting roads could they be somewhat higher for all three candidates. 

Still, Deutsche Telekom succeeds in setting itself apart ­somewhat more clearly from its two competitors in this scenario, which is particularly important for car drivers. With this, as well as the highest voice quality observed in both the urban and rural test ­situations, Deutsche Telekom then takes the category win in the voice discipline. Vodafone follows only slightly behind Telekom in the driving tests in large and small cities. 

Tele­fónica shows a certain gradient from large cities to ­rural areas – in small towns and on ­connecting roads, this provider still has some potential for optimisation.

Little movement on the trains

When it comes to telephoning on trains, the picture is familiar: Telekom and Vodafone perform slightly better than O2, but there is room for improvement with all three providers.  Telefónica/O2, however, was able to improve significantly compared to the previous year - as the only German provider.

If you look at the shares of the frequency spectrum that are now available to the three German providers, Deutsche Telekom has the biggest piece of the pie – and knows how to use it. This is clearly shown by the average data rates in our various test scenarios. Number two in terms of available spectrum is Telefónica/O2, which can be observed above all in the results in large cities – of course, good results here do not result solely from the available frequencies; the ­Munich-based company has also made great progress in its network and especially 5G ­expansion in the large cities. Vodafone, on the other hand, manages to get a lot out of this scarce resource despite a certain handicap in terms of frequency share: In large and small cities as well as on the connecting roads, the provider follows only a small distance behind the stronger competitor from Bonn in each case.

It is also worth noting that the extensive decommissioning of the 3G networks, which is now almost completed, was conducted ­relatively quietly and did not have any negative impact on mobile coverage – on the contrary, thanks to the associated reallocation of frequencies.  

Walktests in large cities:

O2 in second place after Telekom

In the walktests in larger cities, Vodafone is beaten by Tele­fónica/O2 by a razor-thin ­margin.  In the upload per­formance, the advantage of the Bonn-based company is clearer: here, Telekom is ahead, Vodafone and O2 are about equally strong – but follow behind the Bonn-based operator.

Telekom and Vodafone strong on the roads

In the drivetests on the con­necting roads, Telekom and, by a small margin, Vodafone set themselves apart more clearly from Telefónica/O2. Those who want to use connected services while driving are certainly to feel the differences. 

While Telefónica has ­already achieved a lot in the big cities, this provider still has ­some work to do in the ­more rural areas. But Telekom and Vodafone also still have a lot of work ahead of them in these areas.

Mixed picture on the railways

We do not want to neglect the more difficult general conditions that affected all three networks: Due to numerous track renovations, German trains this year often had to travel far away from their regular routes, which were better supplied with mobile communications. Nevertheless, Telekom and Vodafone were each able to gain a few percentage points in this most difficult scenario. In contrast, Telefónica performed slightly weaker in this year‘s rail ranking than last ­year. Ultimately, however, all three German network operators remain challenged to further improve their performance in German trains. A look at Switzerland in particular may inspire them to do so.