To get a more accurate picture of the situation throughout Germany, IMTEST and zafaco GmbH have summarised the results from thousands of miles of measurement runs through Germany, voice quality measurements between the networks and user-based measurements to produce an overall result in a hitherto unrivalled test and thus reveals which of the three network providers – Telekom, Vodafone or Telefónica (O2) – is one step ahead in the mobile broadband sector in Germany.
“Most mobile network tests only look at mobile connections in the same network. IMTEST and zafaco have taken a different route: Around 80,000 test connections between mobile and fixed network connections distributed across Germany give an insight into the voice quality of calls between the mobile and fixed network,” says IMTEST editor-in-chief, Axel Telzerow. “For outgoing connections in 2021, around 23 percent of all call minutes were routed from the mobile to the fixed network. In the opposite direction, the figure was ten percent.”
In the measurements taken by IMTEST and zafaco, the voice connection quality also covers information about call setup times. Error rates for the setup of voice connections are in the very acceptable range of between 0.36 (Telefónica) and 0.6 percent (Vodafone), with voice quality and connection setup times being very good (very short) for all candidates.
The major mobile network test concludes with a check on network availability among the major providers. Even the best statistics for network coverage cannot disguise the fact that in 2022 there is still no reliable and full network coverage in Germany, because the repeated failure of calls or slow internet connections tell another story. From an overall perspective, however, all providers perform well here. Access to the 4G/5G network is not bad either: none of the candidates falls below 90 percent.
In addition to general measurements, zafaco also evaluated the regional data in the IMTEST circulation areas, so the magazine also contains regional evaluations for the FUNKE local editions in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Berlin and Thuringia. “In the regional tests, we were pleasantly surprised above all by Telefónica (O2),” says Jan Bruns, consumer test manager and member of the IMTEST head editorial team. “In North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia, the company performs better than Vodafone.”
Mobile internet was also extensively measured in various networks. “For the first time, we also recorded the quality between the providers’ networks,” says Christoph Sudhues, managing director of zafaco.
With a print run of almost one million, the latest issue of the consumer magazine will be included in all FUNKE daily papers on Friday.