Traditionally, the Swiss Confederates are in the lead in the three-country comparison. This year is no different. The only question now is who is ahead within Switzerland.
This is no longer a surprise for long-time connect readers: Swiss network operators regularly show their counterparts from Germany and Austria where the top is. The test rating “outstanding“, which connect actually only rarely awards, has been found again and again in Switzerland for several years. Without giving too much away: This year, two out of three Swiss mobile providers made it once again to the top step of our winners‘ podium.
The associated neck-and-neck race, especially between the two large providers Swisscom and Sunrise, is being fought out in all fields – even in the important 5G roll-out, the rivals gave each other no quarter. And even the smallest Swiss provider, Salt, has been able to make substantial gains in terms of 5G. How the roll-out of latest mobile communications standard to the Swiss networks has progressed compared to the previous year can be read in the box further down below on this page – 5G is an integral part of our data tests anyway.
VOICE
But also in voice telephony via VoLTE (Voice over LTE), the competition in the land of the Confederates is playing out at the highest level. While Salt maintains the performance already observed in the previous year in this discipline, Swisscom and Sunrise were able to make further gains here. 99 or 100 percent of the achievable points and not least the success rates in the test calls in the large and small cities visited are a word. It is also remarkable that these reliability figures only drop slightly even on the connecting roads as well as in the walktests in Swiss trains.
On the roads, Swisscom and Sunrise are close together, with Salt following at some distance. On the railways, the performance level is also very high – here, however, Swisscom comes out ahead of its competitors by some distance. Also remarkable are the very short call set-up times for all providers – again, not only in large and small cities, but also on roads and in trains.
Once a voice connection has been established, the Swiss networks also offer top voice quality. Swisscom is just ahead in the quality ranking, which also leads to the highest overall score in the voice discipline.
DATA
The Swiss network operators rank also together close in the data discipline. Particularly in larger cities, the measurement values recorded in the drive tests and walktests in the networks of Swisscom and Sunrise show a high proportion with 5G-NR (New Radio) or with LTE 4CA – i.e. the combination of four LTE frequency bands known as “4 Carrier Aggregation“.
As a consequence, users benefit from high data rates: For example, the fastest ten percent (“P90 value“) of the download data rates recorded in the walktests in larger cities are 820.1 Mbps in the Sunrise network, 689.6 Mbps in the Swisscom network and 270.2 Mbps in the Salt network. In terms of upload data rates, Swisscom is again ahead in all the scenarios tested.
In the data tests conducted in larger cities, Swisscom and Sunrise are on equal footing, but in the small towns and on the connecting roads, Swisscom is able to carve out a razor-thin lead over Sunrise.
The smallest provider, Salt, is in third place in all scenarios – but by a very small gap. And at a score level that would still have been enough to win the respective category in Germany outside the major cities.
The performance on the Swiss connecting roads is also pleasing and guarantees drivers in Switzerland excellent connections even while travelling in their cars – which is important not least for the increasingly widespread connected services of modern vehicles. In addition to the race for the fastest data rates, high reliability rates are also particularly important for this. And in this respect, the Swiss providers, including the smallest competitor Salt, are also showing quite respectable results. Even those who want to watch Youtube videos on the road do best in Switzerland in a three-country comparison.
Data connectivity on trains
And once again this year, the Swiss mobile networks show what mobile coverage while travelling on railways can – and should – look like.
In a competition at the highest level, Swisscom again takes a narrow lead in this discipline, closely followed by Sunrise and Salt, who
are both also showing very strong results.
Apart from the convenience for Swiss rail passengers, it is not least very timely that the success rates and data rates in Swiss trains are hardly worse than in cars – this is also something one would wish for in other countries.
5G
The Swiss providers are also at the highest level in the analysis of 5G results. Swisscom and Sunrise offer the latest generation of mobile telephony not only in the larger cities, but also to a high degree in the more rural areas – and Salt has also made strong gains with 5G.
To document the progress of the strong Swiss providers in terms of their 5G roll-outs, we look at the results of the seven-second download tests from the data discipline, as we already did last year.
The high proportions of samples with 5G at Sunrise and Swisscom are particularly striking. Sunrise is the only provider in Switzerland and in the entire DACH region to exceed the 90% mark for 5G downloads in larger cities. Swisscom relies on the combination of radio cells with pure 5G and those with the capacity distribution technology DSS. All in all, this also results in high 5G coverage for this provider – albeit with somewhat lower data rates, especially via DSS.
The high 5G coverage of the two large providers is also impressive in small towns, on roads and in trains. In terms of data rates, Sunrise is slightly ahead. But Salt was also able to significantly increase its 5G coverage compared to last year.
