2degrees does well in OpenSignal's latest mobile network experience report

Spark was quick to issue a release about mobile network mapping company OpenSignal's latest results for New Zealand.

The telco said it has "emerged as a clear leader in New Zealand for providing its customers with a reliable mobile experience, scoring a significant margin over its closest competitors."

Well, Spark has only two competitors as everyone knows, but congrats nevertheless. It's nice for Spark to have independent validation for the service provided to customers, and reliability is really important. Here are the full results from OpenSignal:

Coverage is another area where Spark does well, having scored nine out of 10 for coverage experience in New Zealand, which is one point better than One NZ.

Not to be left out, 2degrees seems to have good 5G at the moment, for video, gaming and data downloads and uploads. OpenSignal says the 5G speeds have gone up in the country, by 32 megabits/s on Spark and 2degrees, and nearly a 100 Mbps on One NZ. 

2degrees uses Ericsson supplied equipment for 5G, which it says is now rather energy efficient thanks to the implementation of "Micro Sleep Tx [transmission]". This puts the radios for the cellular towers on 350 sites into low-power mode when network demand is low. 

Ericsson and 2degrees reckon the low power-mode has saved some three gigawatt hours over the last two years. That's an 18% drop in energy usage, which matters as telcos try to scale down 5G power hunger.

Back to OpenSignal's report, looking at the number of categories each telco won, 2degrees picked up six and was the joint winner in four. One NZ won two, and was named the joint winner in another two.

Spark won the two mentioned above, and was the joint winner in a further two. 

OpenSignal is an interesting company that grabs network metrics from users' devices via apps; apart from mobile service, they now cover broadband experience as well, similar to Ookla's Speedtest.

You can see the averages OpenSignal has picked up in your area in the mobile app, like these results for the Three Telcos in the Herne Bay area of Auckland:

And the network latency, which is the amount of delay experienced when sending and receiving data packets measured in milliseconds (ms):

While that latency is OK for a mobile connection, it looks like 4G and not 5G which is usually half the amount. Wi-Fi is even lower like 4-7 ms with a good access point, but it can vary quite a bit. Having low latency means the apps using your data connection will seem very responsive and generally perform better. It's often overlooked however.