With the ongoing prevalence of LTE provision in the Spanish ­mobile networks, the use of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) has become the standard mode for the transmission of voice calls in most of the networks. At the time of testing, only Yoigo did still not support this modern voice standard and still offered its voice service on legacy-based technology. 

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. Furthermore, VoLTE codecs potentially ­support a wider audio bandwidth. Another advantage of realising voice connections via LTE is that VoLTE typically reduces call setup times.

For the Voice rating, each drive test car and each walk test team carried one Samsung Galaxy S10 smartphone per operator. The phones in the cars called a counterpart in one of the other cars. The phones carried by the walk test teams in the cities called a stationary counterpart. In order to simulate normal smartphone usage, additional data transfers took place in the background of the test calls. In addition, we also evaluate the so-called Multirab (Multi Radio Access Bearer) Connectivity. This value denominates whether data connectivity is available during the ­phone calls. The Voice scores account for 32 per cent of the total result.

CITIES DRIVETEST

VODAFONE AND MOVISTAR HAVE A NECK AND NECK

RACE IN THE VOICE DRIVETESTS IN CITIES

As in other subdomains of this year‘s benchmark, Vodafone and Movistar have a neck and neck race in the voice drivetests conducted in the larger cities. With a distance of one per cent, Vodafone
takes a narrow lead. Orange ­ranges in the midfield, and Yoigo
shows some potential for improvements.

TOWNS DRIVETEST

VODAFONE AHEAD IN DRIVETEST VOICE RESULTS

IN SMALLER TOWNS

In the smaller towns, we see a close contest of the three strong candidates Vodafone, Movistar and Orange. Vodafone takes the overall lead in this category, with Movistar and Orange following closely, each at a distance of only 2 per cent. Yoigo brings up the rear, but similar to the other contenders scores a little stronger in smaller towns than in the cities.

ROADS DRIVETEST

FOR VOICE TELEPHONY ON THE ROADS, VODAFONE

LEADS THE FIELD, FOLLOWED BY ORANGE

In the drivetests conducted on the connecting roads, all operators show somewhat increased reliability issues with call success ratios dropping to a level of around 95 per cent. Vodafone and Movistar both achieve 82 per cent of the possible points in this cate- gory, with Orange following at 76 per cent. In this category, Yoigo falls behind the competition with the most distinct gap due to considerably longer call setup times and a speech quality MOS of only 3.0 on average.

CITIES DRIVETEST

STRONG RESULTS FOR VODAFONE, ORANGE AND

MOVISTAR IN THE VOICE WALKTESTS CONDUCTED

IN SEVEN LARGER SPANISH CITIES

In the walktests which umlaut conducted in seven larger cities (Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Málaga, Murcia, Sevilla and Zaragoza), Vodafone takes the lead again and manages to achieve an impressive score of 97 per cent of the available points. This time, the leader is closely persecuted by Orange who scores with a narrow gap ahead of Movistar. These three operators score very close together in this category, offering an excellent voice experience to their customers. Yoigo scores better than in the other Voice categories, but still ranks last.

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

All Spanish mobile operators have worked hard on further expanding their LTE networks to provide their customers with the best LTE coverage as well as to deliver the highest data rates. In Spain, for many years, Vodafone, Orange and Movistar have been constantly competing to gain the lead in these areas. Meanwhile, the smallest Spanish operator, Yoigo, has been concentrating on expanding its 4G footprint – and claims to have reached 98 per cent LTE coverage of the population thanks to its roaming agreements.

At the same time, the Spanish operators have started their deployments of 5G (for more details, see page 10). We have honoured these advancements by fully integrating 5G measurements into our methodology framework: In each of the two test cars four smartphones were used for the data measurements – one per operator. In the first car, Galaxy S10 smart- phones were used, set to 4G preferred mode. This device and setting can make full use of the 4 carrier aggregation (4CA), meanwhile offered by Movistar, Orange and Vodafone. In the second car as well as in the backpacks of the walktest teams, one Galaxy S20+ per operator was used, set to 5G preferred mode and thus enabling 5G connectivity wherever possible.

umlaut‘s testing considers fast throughputs as well as the networks‘ availability and stability. In order to assess both typical performance and peak speeds, we consider two values: the minimum data rate that is available in 90 per cent of the cases, and additio- nally 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 play- outs mainly concentrate on reliability aspects.

CITIES DRIVETEST

MOVISTAR LEADS IN LARGER CITY DATA DRIVETESTS,

WITH VODAFONE FOLLOWING AT CLOSE DISTANCE

The results of our drive tests conducted in 20 larger Spanish cities (also see section “Results”) confirm the broad LTE roll-out of all operators in urban areas. In this category, Movistar takes a narrow lead ahead of Vodafone due to slightly higher success ratios and data rates in most of the download and upload tests. However, Vodafone follows at very close distance, surpassing Movistar in some of the KPIs such as the average through- puts of the 7 second file downloads and uploads. Orange and Yoigo fall a little behind, both still achieving overall good results in this category. All four operators show some room for improvement when it comes to the reliability of YouTube video streams.

CITIES WALKTEST

VODAFONE TAKES A NARROW LEAD IN THE LARGER

CITIES DATA WALKTESTS

In the results of the walktests conducted in Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Málaga, Murcia, Sevilla and Zaragoza, Vodafone manages to reclaim a narrow lead ahead

of Movistar. But also Orange and Yoigo achieve quite high scores in this category and rank close together, emphasizing that pedestrians in larger Spanish cities can expect a good level of quality for mobile data usage. Again, our fin- dings show some room for improvements in the YouTube category – which applies to all four Spanish operators particularly regarding service reliability.

MOVISTAR RANKS FIRST IN THE DATA DISCIPLINE, VODAFONE FOLLOWS ON THE SECOND RANK. ORANGE AND YOIGO RANK ON THE THIRD AND FOURTH POSITIONS, SCORING CLOSELY TOGETHER.

TOWNS DRIVETEST

MOVISTAR LEADS IN DATA DRIVETESTS IN

SMALLER TOWNS, CLOSELY FOLLOWED BY VODAFONE

In the Data drivetests which our measurement cars performed in 27 smaller Spanish towns, Movistar once again manages to take the lead. Vodafone follows closely – both operators achieve high to very high success ratios when downloading or uploads files and also in the web browsing tests. In the Data drivetests in towns, Yoigo comes in third, and Orange ranks last – but both contenders still score closely together and on an overall high level.

ROADS DRIVETEST

MOVISTAR AND VODAFONE AHEAD IN DATA DRIVETESTS 

ON CONNECTING ROADS, ORANGE AND YOIGO ON A PAR

It can be seen as a good sign for the overall LTE coverage in Spain that our test teams noted only “occasional LTE availability gaps“ during their drives on 7,540 km of connecting roads. In this category, Movistar is again in the lead, with Vodafone following at a narrow distance. The gap to Orange and Yoigo, who score on the same level in this category, is more dis- tinct – to some extent exhibiting a two-class society when it comes to data connectivity on Spanish roads.

5G

SPANISH MOBILE OPERATORS ON A GOOD WAY
TO BROADEN THEIR 5G DEPLOYMENTS

At the time of testing, all four Spanish operators have started to deploy 5G in their networks – however, doing so in varying degrees. 

Vodafone Spain was the first to start its 5G ­services already in mid-2019. By now, the operator has activated 5G network cells in 21 cities across the country using its spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band. Movistar ­(Telefónica) announced in Septem­ber 2020 that it had switched on its 5G service at some first loca­tions and plans to quickly increase 5G coverage to up to 75 per cent of the Spanish population. Orange has 
launched 5G services in parts of 11 cities, namely Madrid incl. Pozuelo de Alarcón, Sevilla, Valencia, Málaga, Barcelona incl. Sabadell, Logroño, Pamplona, Vigo and Zaragoza, and has announced to increase them to 93 cities by the end of 2020.

Másmóvil, standing behind the Yoigo brand, has launched 5G services based on on a combination of its own infrastructure and a “virtual active sharing mode” agreement with Orange. Currently, its 5G service is available in parts of Alicante, Alcoben­das, Almeria, Avila, Barcelona, Bilbao, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Huesca, Jaen, Madrid, Malaga, Melilla, Orense, Salamanca, San Sebastian, Seville, Valencia and Vitoria.
For the next step, Yoigo aims at covering about 35 per cent of the population in about 40 cities with 5G. In the more distant future, the operator plans to launch its own stand-alone 5G network.

As the 5G launches of Movistar, Orange and Yoigo took place only shortly before the start of our drivetests and walktests, in this year‘s benchmark, 5G could only be factored in for the Vodafone network.
We will of course consider 5G for all four Spanish operators in 
next year‘s umlaut connect Mobile Benchmark Spain.

INDIVIDUAL ANALYSIS OF VODAFONE DATA SAMPLES

PROVES 5G SPEED ADVANTAGES

Due to its head start in the 5G deployment, Vodafone already contributed a nameable share of 5G samples especially to our drivetests and walktests conducted in the large cities of Spain.

The tables on the right-hand side show comparisons of the data throughputs achieved in the 7 second download and 7 second upload parts of our data tests, aggregated for 4G samples and 5G samples in the Vodafone network. The results clearly substantiate the speed advantages that 5G technology can already provide today.