State of Mobile Networks: Mexico (October 2016)

In our second look at the mobile networking landscape of Mexico, we see a continuation of trends we identiﬁed six months ago. Mexico's big incumbent remains a dominating force in OpenSignal's 4G rankings, but a newly revitalized challenger is making solid gains. Drawing on 420 million datapoints, OpenSignal compared the 3G and 4G performance of Mexico's three nationwide operators: Telcel, Movistar and AT&T.

Telcel takes the lead in A two-way tie for our REPORT FACTS our 4G speed tests LTE availability award

OpenSignal measured average LTE download Telcel may have had an advantage in 4G speed, but speeds on Telcel's LTE network at 23.3 Mbps. AT&T, the operator ran neck and neck with AT&T in 4G however, was a fast follower. Our users were able to availability. Our testers were able to ﬁnd an LTE connect to its LTE network at 19.3 Mbps. signal on both operators' networks around 65% of

the time. Report Location Mexico

Data Sample Size 427,668,954

User Sample Size 29,839 AT&T wins overall speed In Mexico City it's easier crown on combined 3G, to ﬁnd a 4G connection Sample Period Jun 1st - Aug 31st 2016 4G strength In Mexico's capital, we saw improvement from all AT&T won out in our overall speed metric, which three operators in their availability scores. We measures the typical mobile data connection users measured the biggest improvement from Movistar, experience over both 3G and 4G networks. We but AT&T won our availability award for Mexico city recorded the fastest 3G speeds on AT&T's HSPA as our users were able to connect to its 4G network service, which, combined with its impressive LTE 75% of the time. performance, helped it deliver average overall connections of 10.9 Mbps in our tests.

Overall Network Comparison

Download Speed: 4G Download Speed: 3G Download Speed: OverallLatency: 4G Latency: 3G Availability: 4G

AT&T

Movistar

Telcel

THE OPENSIGNAL APP: TESTING NETWORK PERFORMANCE ON MILLIONS OF PHONES GLOBALLY

Our app continually runs tests to measure the real world experience users receive. Instead of relying on user-initiated or drive-test simulations, we are able to paint a holistic picture of network’s performance through our background tests and crowdsourcing techniques -- all the while protecting the privacy of our millions of active OpenSignal users. The app has been downloaded over 15 million times collecting billions of measurements.

Network Availability Comparison

AT&T AVAILABILITY: 4G

This metric shows the proportion of time LTE subscribers on each network have a 4G (LTE) Movistar connection available to them. It's a measure of the proportion of time users have a 4G signal on a network rather than a measure of geographic or population coverage. Telcel

0 % 12 % 24 % 36 % 48 % 70 %

Network Speed Comparison

AT&T DOWNLOAD SPEED: 4G

This metric shows the average download speed on each network on 4G (LTE) Movistar connections.

Telcel

0 Mbps 4 Mbps 8 Mbps 12 Mbps 16 Mbps 20 Mbps 25 Mbps

AT&T DOWNLOAD SPEED: 3G

This metric shows the average download speed on each network on 3G connections. Movistar

Telcel

0 Mbps 1 Mbps 2 Mbps 3 Mbps 4 Mbps 5 Mbps

AT&T DOWNLOAD SPEED: OVERALL

This metric shows the average download Movistar speed experienced by a user across all of an operator's networks. Overall speed doesn't just factor in 3G and LTE speeds, but also the availability of each network technology. Telcel Operators with lower LTE coverage tend to have lower overall speeds because their customers spend much more time connected to 0 Mbps 3 Mbps 6 Mbps 9 Mbps 12 Mbps 15 Mbps slower 3G networks.

Network Latency Comparison

AT&T LATENCY: 4G

This metric shows the average latency on each network on 4G (LTE) connections. Latency, Movistar measured in milliseconds, is the delay data experiences as it travels between points in the network. A lower score in this metric is a sign of a more responsive network. Telcel

0 ms 11 ms 22 ms 33 ms 44 ms 55 ms 65 ms

AT&T LATENCY: 3G

This metric shows the average latency on each network on 3G connections. Latency, Movistar measured in milliseconds, is the delay data experiences as it travels between points in the network. A lower score in this metric is a sign of a more responsive network. Telcel

0 ms 26 ms 52 ms 78 ms 104 ms 130 ms 155 ms

Regional results

This chart shows the regional winners in each category OpenSignal measures. Click on the icons to see a more detailed graph showing each operator’s performance.

Availability: 4G Latency: 4G Download Speed: 4G

Mexico City

Analysis METHODOLOGY NOTES

Mexico's LTE rollout continues to steam ahead as mobile giant Telcel faces off OpenSignal data is collected from against its two smaller competitors Movistar and AT&T Mexico. Just as we saw in regular consumer smartphones and our first State of Mobile Networks report for Mexico, AT&T seems to be recorded under conditions of normal presenting the biggest challenge to Telcel in terms of network performance. It's usage. As opposed to drive-test been less than two years since AT&T swooped over the U.S. border, acquiring data, which simulates the typical Mexican operators Iusacell and Nextel Mexico, and it's only been a year since it user experience by using the same launched its first LTE network. But OpenSignal is already seeing AT&T match up devices to measure network against Telcel in many 4G performance metrics. performance in a small number of locations, we take our For this report, we drew on more than 420 million measurements taken by nearly measurements from millions of 30,000 OpenSignal smartphone users in Mexico between June and August. smartphones owned by normal Since publishing our last Mexico report in April, OpenSignal made some people who have downloaded the adjustments to both the way we collect data from our smartphone apps and the OpenSignal app. methodology we use to parse that data. The update allows us to make more measurements, examine new types of network metrics and hone the precision of the measurements we've always collected, helping us isolate the typical Those measurements are taken consumer mobile experience more effectively (for more details, see our recent wherever users happen to be, blog post). The changes haven't affected our overall rankings of networks in whether indoors or out, in a city or Mexico or around the world, but for sake of analytical rigor we aren't making in the countryside, representing any direct comparisons between results collected from the two different performance the way users methodologies. experience it. For more information on how we collect and analyze our While we examine the nationwide 3G and 4G performance of Mexico's big 3 data see our methodology page. operators — América Móvil's Telcel, Telefónica's Movistar and AT&T Mexico — OpenSignal is also taking its first glimpse at how 4G networks stacked up in the For this particular report, country's capital and largest population center Mexico City. 427,668,954 datapoints were collected from 29,839 users during 4G vs. 3G the period: Jun 1st - Aug 31st 2016

Telcel and AT&T split our speed awards with AT&T winning top honors in 3G and All data has been collected from overall speed and Telcel leading the 4G category. Our testers on Telcel's LTE users of the OpenSignal mobile app network averaged download speeds of 23.3 Mbps. AT&T wasn't far behind in for Android or iOS. our 4G measurements, though, averaging 19.3 Mbps per connection. Meanwhile Movistar came in last in our summer tests, averaging 15.3 Mbps. For every metric we've calculated Telcel may have won our 4G speed award, but that doesn't mean it won our the statistical conﬁdence interval overall speed metric, which tracks the typical data speed users see across and plotted this on all of the graphs. operators' 3G and 4G networks. AT&T took that honor. That's due mainly to When conﬁdence intervals overlap AT&T's high performing HSPA network. for a certain metric we can't actually be sure which of the overlapping We clocked average AT&T 3G speeds at 4.1 Mbps, while our measurements for operators has the best performance. both Telcel and Movistar connections came in under 3 Mbps. Those fast 3G connections combined with AT&T's good showing in our 4G speed metric meant AT&T was able to deliver average overall connection speeds of 10.9 Mbps, For this reason some metrics have compared to 8.5 Mbps for Telcel, according to our data. multiple operator winners when we've judged that the data is too When it came to 4G availability, we saw a much closer race between Telcel and close to call a victory. AT&T. Rather than track geographic coverage, our availability metric measures the proportion of time users have access to a particular network. In this case, OpenSignal users were able to latch onto an AT&T LTE signal 66.5% of the time and a Telcel LTE signal 64.9% of the time — both results were close enough to produce a statistical tie in our analysis. Movistar, however, still has some work to do to catch up with either operator. Our testers had access to a Movistar 4G connection just over half the time.

The ﬁnal metric we tracked was network latency, which measures the reaction of a network. A lower latency connection means data makes the round trip between a smartphone and the network much more quickly, enabling more responsive internet browsing and producing less lag time in communications apps. Telcel won our 4G latency award with an average response time of 49.1 milliseconds, while AT&T and Movistar shared our 3G latency prize with response times just over 120ms.

A look at the Capital

When we drilled down into our measurements for the capital region, we found that LTE signals were much more readily available in Mexico City. While AT&T was tied with Telcel in 4G availability nationally, it won 4G availability in Mexico City outright. Our AT&T network testers were able to see a 4G connection 75% of the time.

All three operators, however, saw big improvements over their national numbers in the former Distrito Federal, but none saw as big an improvement as Movistar. The Telefónica subsidiary scored 63.3% in our availability metric, 12 percentage points higher than its nationwide availability rating. Even with that big boost in 4G accessibility though, Movistar wasn't able to catch up to Telcel, which came in second in our availability rankings for Mexico City. Our users were able to connect to Telcel's LTE network in the capital 68% of the time.

In terms of speed, operators' performance in Mexico City largely lined up with their national results. Just as it won OpenSignal's nationwide 4G speed award, Telcel won our 4G speed prize in Mexico's largest city, averaging 23 Mbps in our measurements. Telcel also had the lowest 4G latency in our tests in Mexico City, averaging 39.4ms.

As always, the mobile competitive landscape in Mexico is constantly evolving. Both AT&T and Movistar have announced plans to expand their LTE networks, and they're doing so at an opportune time. América Móvil continues to face regulatory constraints until it pares down its outsized share of the Mexican mobile market (which has been as high as 70%). There's no better time to grow when the dominant player in your industry is being pressured to shrink.