In the past few years, cellular services globally have been swift in shifting focus from basic voice services to comprehensive data services to complement the staggering rise in smartphone and social apps usage.
In Pakistan too, smartphone users have caught up with the change. Capturing and uploading pictures and videos, watching videos and movies on YouTube or streaming sites, playing video games, and browsing the internet are some of the things that an average Pakistani cellular subscriber typically does on a daily basis.
OpenSignal – an independent global standard for analyzing consumer mobile experience – recently issued its Mobile Network Experience Report for Q2, 2020, in which it examined the mobile network experience of the four nationwide mobile network operators in Pakistan, namely Jazz, Telenor, Ufone, and Zong.
The user experience that Pakistani cellular operators deliver to their users was gauged in seven key categories including Video, Voice App, Download Speed, Upload Speed, 4G Availability, 4G Coverage, and, for the first time in OpenSignal’s reporting, Gaming.
Here’s how Pakistani telcos fared in all these categories as per the report.
Video Experience
Out of a possible 100 points on the Video Experience chart, Zong scored the highest 57.3 points taking the lead in the category. Zong is followed by Jazz with a score of 53 in the same category. Telenor scored the least on the Video Experience chart with a score of 41.6 while Ufone ended up the second last on the list with 50.6 points.
Gaming Experience
According to OpenSignal, this is the first time it has assessed how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming at the operator-level in Pakistan. Ufone took the lead in the category with a score of 35.7 on a scale of 100 points. Jazz followed closely with 34.6 points followed by Zong at a games experience score of 34.9. Telenor ended up last with 34.4 points.
Voice App Experience
On OpenSignal’s Voice App experience chart, Ufone secured the highest score of 66.6 points out of a possible 100. The telco was followed closely by Zong with 65.5 points. Jazz scored 65.2 while Telenor ended up last here too with 63.6 points.
Download Speed Experience
Zong won the first place in the Download Speed experience category with download speeds of 10.9 Mbps. Jazz came in second with 10.4 points. The other two telcos namely Ufone and Telenor were nowhere near the top two with their respective download speeds of 5.9 and 3.8 Mbps.
Upload Speed Experience
Zong took the lead in Upload Speed experience too with upload speeds of 4.5 Mbps per second. Jazz followed somewhat closely with speeds of 4.2 Mbps. In upload speeds too, Ufone and Telenor stood far behind the top 2 with each delivering speeds of 1.7 Mbps at their best.
4G Availability Experience
4G availability across Pakistan was also examined by OpenSignal in its network experience report. Out of all telcos, Zong’s 4G network was found to be available 86.6% of the time, the highest in the category. Jazz’s 4G was available for 81.5% of the time. 4G availability of Telenor and Ufone stood at 77.3% and 65.4% of the times respectively.
4G Coverage Experience
On the 4G coverage experience charts too, Zong won the top place with the highest score of 5.7 out of a possible 10 points. Coming in second in the category are Jazz and Telenor with each one scoring 4.8 points. Ufone secured a poor 4G coverage experience score of 2.1.
Summary: Zong takes the lead in 5 out of 7 categories
While Ufone managed to score highly in terms of Games and Voice App experiences, Zong took the lead in the remaining 5 categories including Video, Download Speed, Upload Speed, 4G Availability, and 4G Coverage experiences.
