Read our newest article on Mobile Data Speeds from 2020

Benchmarking Mobile Data Bitrates

DNA Plc contracted Omnitele to measure and compare the data speeds offered by Finnish mobile service providers DNA, Elisa and Telia in the 20 largest cities in Finland. The 20 cities cover over 50 percent of the Finnish population. The measurements also included four popular ski resorts in northern Finland and Lapland. The benchmark focused on the data rates available with each service provider’s premium subscription available to the consumers (unlimited data volume, highest available data rate).

The measurements were carried out from April until early May 2019 and included over 7 000 drive-test kilometers. Benchmark results varied during the measurements in different cities and locations.

Main Results

Data speeds achieved by all operators were at an excellent level. Considering the most typical use cases, such as web browsing and video streaming, the measured data rates enable excellent mobile service experience with all three service providers.

The highest average download data transfer speed was measured with the DNA subscription, 83.9 Mbps. The results for Elisa and Telia subscriptions were 79.6 and 63.2 Mbps, respectively.

In addition to average data speeds, we also investigated the availability of different video quality levels based on the connection speed recommendations.

5 Mbps was selected to present the standard requirement of HD-video streaming, and 25 Mbps as the requirement for Ultra-HD (4K) video. 5 Mbps was achieved by 96.7 % of the measured samples with Elisa subscription, by 96.2 % of the samples with the DNA subscription and by 92.6 % of the samples with the Telia subscription. The Ultra-HD requirement (25 Mbps) was reached by 80.1 % of the samples with the DNA subscription, by 78.2 % of the samples with the Elisa subscription and by 70.1 % of the samples with the Telia subscription.

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