ANACOM has released its final report evaluating the quality of the SMS (short message service) and MMS (multimedia messaging service) services. The work includes the evaluation of the quality of services provided by the operators Sonaecom (Optimus), TMN and Vodafone Portugal, through analysis of technical parameters that reflect perception of quality from a user's point of view.
Ground measurements for this study took place between 9 and 15 July 2008, with analysis carried out of eleven indicators: service accessibility; SMS transmission time; SMS delivery time; SMS delivery rate; MMS transmission rate; MMS transmission speed; MMS notification rate; MMS reception rate; MMS reception speed; MMS delivery rate and MMS delivery time.
In total, 15,117 tests messages were sent, which corresponds to approximately 72 hours of measurements.
The assessment carried out by ANACOM revealed very good performance of the SMS and MMS services, with messages delivery rates exceeding 98% and with an average delivery time of less than 9 seconds for SMS, and 54 seconds for MMS.
Specifically with respect to the short message service (SMS), the results showed no significant differences between operators, except for the service provided by Sonaecom (Optimus) in the period between 21.00 and 24.00. Nor were there significant differences between operators in terms of MMS, other than for the parameter of the ''average message delivery time'' in the evaluation of which it was observed that Sonaecom (Optimus) and Vodafone Portugal recorded times of around 35 seconds, while for TMN an average time of 53.4 seconds was reported.
