For the first time, connect and its network test partner zafaco performed a broadband fixed-network test in Austria.
The three national “big players” and four regional “local players” took part in the comparison. At the end, Magenta Telekom prevailed over the other “big players”, and Salzburg AG over the other “local players”. The surprise: The regional providers consistently outperformed the national ones.
The broadband boom, primarily fuelled by video streaming and gaming, continues unabated in Austria. Reason enough for the connect’s editorial office to immediately start performing the fixed-network test, recognised in Germany for many years as the industry standard, in the Alpine country as well.
Because voice telephony over fixed networks only plays a minor role in the Alpine country, the test focused on data connections. zafaco set up test connections in ten cities. During September and October, these connections were used by automated systems to carry out a total of 769,737 measurements of high-speed internet transmission, web services and web TV.
The evaluations also took the crowdsourcing analyses of the publicly accessible RTR network test results into account (see www.netztest.at/de/Opendata).
Among the test candidates, connect distinguished between big players offering connections nationwide, and local players only operating in a few regions.
Fixed network via LTE – an alternative?
connect non-competitively examined the LTE-based solutions provided by A1 Telekom, Magenta Telekom and Hutchison Drei as alternatives to fixed networks. These LTE-based fixed network alternatives are respectively known as “A1 Netcube Internet L”, “Magenta Telekom My HomeNet LTE Extreme” and “Drei EasyNet XXL”. They were tested non-competitively. Like its fixed-network cousin, the download rates of test measurements on the mobile broadband internet never exceeded 90 percent of the advertised transmission rate of 150 Mbit/s. Those wanting to stream web TV via LTE have to tolerate longer response and reaction times. The received image quality was okay overall.
You can find the complete test in connect issue 12/2019.