Mobile Quality of Service

Download the press release (pdf - 604KB)

Today Arcep is publishing the results of its 2022 quality-of-service (QoS) audit of the Antilles and Guiana. All of the data are available on the “Mon réseau mobile” website and as open datasets.

These publications give consumers in France’s overseas departments and territories the ability to compare local operators’ performance, and for local decision-makers to obtain an assessment of mobile connectivity in their territory.

This audit represents more than 400,000 measurements taken in Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guiana, Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin, on six mobile operators. The audit concerned the most widely used mobile services, notably:

Voice and texting (SMS): success rate for calls maintained for two minutes and without audible disturbance, voice quality (MOS[1]), SMS received in under 10 seconds;
Use of the internet: average speeds (upstream and downstream), web browsing (pages loaded in five and 10 seconds), decent and perfect quality video streaming.

The conducted tests seek to evaluate the performance of operators’ networks in an entirely comparable manner, and under a variety of conditions. Note that Free Caraïbe performances were measured for the first time during this Arcep quality of service audit.

The findings are to be assessed on a territory-by-territory and operator-by-operator basis:

In Guadeloupe, Orange provides the best quality of service on the vast majority of indicators, notably voice. Outremer Télécom (OMT) ranks second for web page downloads in under five seconds and just behind Orange for other uses of the internet. Free Caraïbe, whose performances were being measured for the first time, places second for voice quality (MOS) on roadways. Digicel performed better than Free Caraïbe on the success rate for web pages loaded in under five seconds and ranks third.
In Martinique, the quality of web browsing provided by all operators is close to the level measured in Metropolitan France. Orange ranks first on multiple QoS indicators. Outremer Télécom (OMT) stands out on internet uses where it ranks second; Digicel and Free Caraïbe rank last in these areas.
In Guiana, Outremer Télécom (OMT) delivered the highest success rate for perfect quality streaming. It places second on voice and texting indicators and internet uses. Orange leads the rankings for voice indicators, notably on roadways. For internet uses, Free Caraïbe slightly outperforms Digicel and is in third spot. All operators perform poorly on QoS on roadways, compared to the rest of the national territory.
In Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin, all operators’ performances on voice and internet uses are weaker than in the rest of the national territory. Orange delivered the strongest QoS overall on voice and SMS indicators.
- In Saint-Barthélemy, Dauphin Télécom ranks second on call maintenance success rate. Digicel ranks first on web pages loaded in under five seconds.
- In Saint-Martin, Free Caraïbe performs well on internet uses, and ranks second. Dauphin Telecom is in third place behind Free Caraïbe for perfect video streaming. UTS ranks second for call success rate indicators in residential locations and web browsing on roadways.

Arcep invites everyone to visit the “Mon réseau mobile” website to view the complete findings, according to their needs and location.

Change in the rules for implementing protocols

Changes regarding the tools used to conduct the audits make it impossible to compare this year’s findings with last year’s. These changes in no way affect comparisons between operators.

Absence of certain indicators

Technical issues at the time of the audit (notably due to hurricane Fiona) reduced the volume of the tests conducted for certain indicators in the territories of Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy. As a result, average speeds and voice call success rates on roadways (i.e. calls maintained for two minutes without audible disturbance, and voice quality/MOS) indicators were eliminated, due to a lack of statistical reliability. In Saint-Barthélemy, indicators for decent and perfect quality video streaming and file transfers were also eliminated for the same reason.

[1] Objective method for measuring voice quality which consists of calculating the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) by comparing a benchmark call made and the audio signal received.

Detailed findings

The graphs are to be read as follows: for Digicel in Guadeloupe,, in living environments, an 81% success rates for calls maintained for two minutes, of which 58% were of perfect quality.

Guadeloupe

Martinique

Average speeds: average upstream speed expressed in Mbit/s and average downstream speed expressed in Mbit/s
Speed > 3 Mbit/s: Percentage of download speed above 3 Mbit/s for a 250 Mb file
Navigation Web: Pages loaded in under 10 seconds, of which pages loaded in under five seconds
Video streaming: success rate for a 2-minute viewing with decent quality streaming, of which perfect quality streaming
Appels: success rate for calls maintained for two minutes, of which those with perfect audio quality (on-net/off-net for residential, off-net only for roadways)
Average MOS: average MOS (mean opinion score) for call maintenance, which measures the difference between the live call and the benchmark sample (on-net/off-net for residential, off-net only for roadways)
SMS: success rate for text messages received in under 10s (on-net/off-net for residential, off-net only for roadways)