Vodafone, 2degrees offer mobile experience polish

Tutela says Vodafone has New Zealand’s fastest mobile data. It wins the company’s June 2020 report with downloads and uploads. The mobile industry research company says 2degrees has the highest consistent quality and the best latency.

When it comes to raw mobile speed Vodafone is well in front of Spark and 2degrees. Its median download speed is 23.9 Mbps. Uploads come in at 9.2 Mbps.

Spark trails with a median download speed of 20 Mbps. That’s not far behind Vodafone, yet it has the slowest upload speed at 7.7 Mbps.

While 2degrees has the slowest median download speed at 19.5 Mbps, that is only 4.4 Mbps behind the leader. The company is second when it comes to upload speeds with a median of 8.1 Mbps.

Tutela reports on consistent quality

According to Tutela the 2degrees network is good enough for applications like high definition video calls, streaming video and mobile gaming for 85.6 percent of the time.

Tutela calls this measure ‌Excellent Consistent Quality. The mobile carriers are only compared in places where they all have coverage.

Spark follows a fraction behind meeting the standard for 84.9 percent of the time.

Vodafone brings up the rear on that measure, reaching the required level 81.9 percent of the time.

The numbers are so close that it might help to think of the scores as a draw with Vodafone a tick behind.

2degrees wins on latency

2degrees had the best one-way latency result at 24.5 ms. It was followed by Vodafone at 25.9 ms. Spark in third for a median one-way latency of 29.4 ms.

Looking at these numbers it seems there is not much in it. Although Vodafone and 2degrees do better than Spark in almost every measurement, no single carrier is a long way ahead or behind the pack.

The report also shows that if Vodafone’s December 5G launch has made any impact, it is mainly at the margins.

To get these results Tutela took 3.89 billion network quality measurements including 1.36 million speed tests.

Tutela carried out tests for the June 2020 report between March and May of this year. As New Zealand was in lockdown for much of this time the numbers may not reflect everyday mobile performance.