Vodafone, Orange and recently also Movistar support Voice over LTE (VoLTE) in their networks. VoLTE transmits voice calls as data packets over a 4G connection. This way, the otherwise necessary “­circuit-switched fallback“, which forces smartphones to switch back to 3G or 2G in order to take or place a phone call, can be avoided. Also, VoLTE codecs potentially ­support a wider audio bandwidth providing operators with the opportunity to deliver higher speech quality to their customers. Thus, currently Yoigo remains the only Spanish operator who does not support this modern voice standard.

However, Movistar only launched VoLTE immediately before the measurements for our benchmark started. As there was not enough time to adapt our test setup accordingly, this year‘s test results could not yet consider the possible performance and quality ­benefits of VoLTE in the ­Movistar network. But in order to honor this operator‘s ­efforts and to give an indication how Movistar might score next time when VoLTE is consi­dered in its evaluation, we ran some simula­tions. In a corridor of possible scenarios we extrapolated how the operator would have scored with VoLTE – based on the average and best voice results of its competitors who already support the newer voice standard.

­According to these simula­tions, Movistar may expect a plus between 40 and 50 points when scored with VoLTE. However, we must emphasize that the ­official result of this year‘s benchmark is of course based only on the actually gathered measurement values. ­Furthermore, even with VoLTE considered for ­Movistar, the overall ranking would not have changed.

VODAFONE SHOWS STRONGEST VOICE RESULTS IN THE DRIVETESTS IN CITIES

In the larger cities, Vodafone achieves the highest success ­ratios and together with Orange also the shortest call setup times thanks to VoLTE. The determined speech quality is particularly high in the Vodafone network.

VODAFONE AND ORANGE AHEAD IN DRIVETEST VOICE RESULTS DETERMINED IN SMALLER TOWNS

In the smaller towns, Orange achieves an impressive 100 per cent call success ratio, closely followed by Vodafone. Call setup times are again the shortest for both candidates using VoLTE. And Vodafone leads once more in terms of speech quality in the towns.

FOR VOICE TELEPHONY ON THE ROADS, VODAFONE LEADS THE FIELD, FOLLOWED BY ORANGE

In the drivetests conducted on the connecting roads, the call s­uccess ­ratios and speech quality determined for all Spanish operators more or less decrease while the call ­setup ­times ­increase. Only ­Movistar achieves slightly shorter call ­setup times on the roads compared to its ­results in the cities and towns. However, in comparison to last year‘s ­results, all four operators ­managed to somewhat improve their call success ratios on the connecting roads. In the overall assessment, Vodafone achieves the highest score for voice telephony in this category.

VODAFONE ALSO LEADS IN THE VOICE WALKTEsTS CONDUCTED IN SEVEN LARGER SPANISH CITIES

In the walktests that umlaut ­con­ducted in seven larger ­cities
(Barcelona, Las Palmas, Madrid, Málaga, Sevilla, Valencia and ­Zaragoza), again Vodafone ­achieves the best score, providing a high call success ratio, the shortest call setup times and the highest speech quality. Orange ranks second, reaching the same high success ratio as Vodafone and only slightly longer call setup times. Movistar ranks third and Yoigo fourth, but both also show good success ratios in the voice walktests.

VODAFONE SHOWS THE BEST VOICE RESULTS, ORANGE RANKS SECOND, MOVISTAR THIRD AND YOIGO FOURTH.

Mobile Operators are constantly striving to provide their customers with the best LTE coverage as well as to deliver the highest data rates. In Spain, Vodafone, Orange and Movistar are constantly ­competing for the lead in these areas. The smallest Spanish operator, ­Yoigo is still mainly concentrating on ex­pan­ding its 4G footprint – but claims to have reached 98 per cent LTE coverage of the population thanks to roaming agreements.

In order to assess the performance and reliability of data connections, each of our four drivetest cars and also the walktest team ­carried one Samsung ­Galaxy S9 per operator. Supporting the LTE category 18, these smartphones are able to ­benefit from the so-called carrier aggregation – the combined use of theoretically up to 32 LTE ­carrier frequencies. Practi­cally, Vodafone and Movistar today offer 4CA – four combined LTE carriers. With a theoretical maximum speed of 1.2 Gbps, the Galaxy S9 can make full use of such network configurations.

umlaut‘s testing considers fast throughputs as well as the networks‘ ­availability and ­stability. In order to assess typical performance as well as peak speeds, we consider two values: the ­minimum data rate that is available in 90 per cent of the cases, and additionally the peak data rate that is surpassed in 10 per cent of the cases. Web page and file downloads or file ­uploads ­reward fast speeds, while the determina­tion of success ­ratios and ­assessing YouTube play­outs concentrate on ­reliability ­aspects. As YouTube streams videos at adaptive bitrates, the average value of the received video ­resolution is another important performance indicator.

CLOSE RACE BETWEEN VODAFONE, ORANGE AND MOVISTAR IN LARGER CITY DATA DRIVETESTS

In the drive tests conducted in 20 cities with a population of more than 100,000 inhabitants, we see a neck-and-neck race between Vodafone, Orange and Movistar. Ultimately, Vodafone leads by a narrow margin, followed by Orange and Movistar who score on a par in this category. Yoigo ranks fourth at a distance of only about six percent of the achievable points. 

All operators achieve excellent success ratios in the cities. The described ranking originates mainly in the observed data throughput rates of the tested file downloads and uploads. Also, in the ­category of ­YouTube live ­videos, Movistar performs slightly behind the other contenders.

VODAFONE CLEARLY LEADS IN THE LARGER CITIES DATA WALKTESTS

The results of the walktests conducted in Barcelona, Las Palmas, Madrid, Málaga, Sevilla, ­Valencia and ­Zaragoza are a little more distinct than those of the drive­tests that took place in the ­larger cities: Vodafone takes a clear lead. ­Movistar ranks second­ in this category, followed at close distance by Orange. As in the other data assessments, Yoigo falls a little behind.

The success ratios of web page access and file transfers are overall good, with Yoigo losing some points in the category of file up­loads as well as for slower download and upload data rates. As in the drivetests, Movistar performs a little behind the competition when it comes to YouTube live videos.

VODAFONE IS THE CLEAR WINNER IN THE DATA DISCIPLINE, MOVISTAR RANKS SECOND WITH ORANGE FOLLOWING AT A CLOSE DISTANCE OF JUST ONE POINT.

VODAFONE LEADS IN DATA DRIVETESTS IN SMALLER TOWNS, CLOSELY FOLLOWED BY ORANGE AND MOVISTAR

In the data drivetests that our measurement cars performed
in 24 smaller Spanish towns, the three top contenders rank closely together. Once again, Vodafone manages to take the lead by a narrow margin. At distances of one per cent of the obtainable ­points in this category, Orange comes in second and Movistar third. Yoigo ranks last but achieves about the same score in the smaller towns as it did in the data drivetests ­conducted in the larger cities. The strengths and weaknes­ses of each candidate are very similar to those observed in the cities.

VODAFONE AND MOVISTAR ON A PAR IN DATA DRIVETESTS ON CONNECTING ROADS, ORANGE RANKS THIRD

On the 7,630 km of connecting roads covered by our test cars, Vodafone and Movistar performed particularly well and score on a par. Orange ranks third at a distance of two per cent of the achie­vable points. Yoigo ranks fourth but shows a distinct improvement over its results in last year‘s benchmark in this category.