Vodafone 4G availability catches up with Telstra: survey

Australia's mobile networks are in good shape and consistently available across the country despite several recent nationwide outages, analyst firm OpenSignal's latest survey reveals.

OpenSignal used data from 7904 users and conducted close to 15.6 million automated tests across Australia's three mobile network operators.

The sampling was done during February 1 to March 30 this year. During the period Telstra suffered several extensive outages to its nationwide networks, and was forced to compensate customers for loss of service.

Nevertheless, OpenSignal's data showed that Australian mobile users stand a high chance of connecting at fast 4G speeds, with the country ranking in the top 20 worldwide for LTE availability and in the top 10 for performance.

Vodafone has caught up with incumbent Telstra for 4G availability, OpenSignal's data showed, with both telcos being statistically tied at 77.6 percent chance of getting an LTE connection.

Optus was not far behind Vodafone and Telstra, however, with an availability rating for 4G of 73.4 percent of connection attempts.

Telstra remains Australia's 4G LTE speed king, averaging 23.6 Mbps downloads on average. The incumbent also provided the best overall average speeds across both its 3G and 4G networks, reaching 17.1 Mbps during the period.

In comparison, OpenSignal measured LTE download speeds for Vodafone and Optus at over 18 Mbps for both telcos. All three operators recorded 4G latency, or network responsiveness, of 50 to 55ms.

OpenSignal noted that Australian telcos are trialling advanced new features such as carrier aggregation and LTE-Advanced for further performance boosts.

It expects 4G speeds to continue to climb as Australian customers upgrade their smartphones to models with more advanced features.

"Australia has done an admirable job maintaining its leading role in the global 4G market. In our most recent tabulations, the country was among the top 10 in average LTE speed and in the top 20 in 4G availability (not an easy feat to pull off considering Australia's vast territory)," OpenSignal concluded.