The country’s hills are alive with sound of summer smartphones
Smartphone users in Austria generally have a better mobile experience when on autobahns and railways and spend more time connected to 5G services and less time with no signal, compared to the rest of the country.
Measured between March and May, Opensignal’s analysis revealed mobile users on Austria’s highways and railways are seeing average download speeds of 60.2Mbps — 26.5% faster than the national average. Train users are enjoying 12.2% faster average download speeds than the national average. Meanwhile upload speeds on highways and railways are around a fifth faster than the national average.
Opensignal said travellers on the nation’s transport arteries also see significantly lower periods of no signal than the national average of 0.8%. 5G users also spend similar amounts of time connected to 5G services around both Austria’s highway and railway networks — 20.2-20.9% of the time — a substantially better result than the national average of 15.2%.
Travellers are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with satisfactory loading times and little stalling – a must for long, boring journeys. Likewise, Opensignal’s average measured games experience score for the whole country is around 5.3 points lower than that for its highways and railways.
The results mirror Opensignal’s German findings suggesting wider progress has been made on connected car initiatives. Austria is one of the host countries of the 5G-CARMEN project on the highway connecting Italy to Germany, which is one of the 5G Corridors in Europe.
Big investments
Mobile network coverage has been improving along Austria’s most important railway lines in recent years and additional stations have been equipped with WLAN. Around 1,500km of the railway network already has good mobile phone reception.
Railway company ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG has been expanding its mobile radio infrastructure using existing infrastructure along the railway lines. The sites are connected to its fibre optic network, offering speeds up to 600Mbps.
Operators head-to-head
A1 users see the fastest average overall download speed in the country, both when driving down the Austrian highways and when riding the country’s trains. A1’s average download speeds hit 71.1Mbps on highways, beating second-placed Magenta by 11.9Mbps (20.1%) and third-placed 3 by 20.8Mbps (41.4%).
A1 also takes the top spot for the railways’ area, with a score of 58.8Mbps — although it commands a smaller lead over its competitors, as it beats Magenta by 6.3Mbps (11.9%) and 3 by 11.1Mbps (23.2%).
On upload speed experience, A1 and Magenta are in a statistical tie around highways, with scores of 15.3-16.5Mbps. However, Magenta comes first for upload speed experience around railways, beating A1 by 2.1Mbps.