The Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM) concluded, for the third consecutive year, the study that assesses the quality of mobile networks in Portugal, taking into account the analysis of three fundamental indicators: coverage, accessibility and audio quality.
The study reveals that the coverage, equivalent to what is commonly referred to as ''network'', is not, yet, homogeneous over the whole national territory. Although it has satisfactory levels in the Mainland and in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, the Autonomous Region of Azores has a totally different situation, with a good coverage in urban areas and insufficient or inexistent coverage in areas that are not so densely populated and in road arteries. Moreover, Optimus operator was not present in Flores, Corvo, Santa Maria and Graciosa islands.
Accessibility, that is, the capacity of establishing and maintaining calls, offered a high level of performance for this type of networks, despite the increase in the number of users that took place overt the last years. In the whole national territory, approximately 95% of test calls made were successfully established and adequately maintained during the pre-established time.
Similar to what is observed in coverage, there were differences of performance as far as accessibility is concerned between the Mainland and the Autonomous Regions. In the Mainland, the index of calls initiated and terminated usually exceeds 95%,both in the cities and in the road arteries. In Azores and Madeira there were differences between urban areas and road arteries: while in the cities the results are very good - 97% in Madeira and 99% in Azores - in road arteries terminated calls usually amount to 93% in Madeira and do not exceed 71% in Azores.
The situation observed in Azores, already diagnosed in 2001, is due to the existence of areas not covered by the networks of some operators, revealing the need for an additional investment effort so as to overcome deficiencies.
The audio quality, the indicator that measures the perceptivity of conversations, presented good or acceptable levels in 99.4% in test calls and poor or bad levels in 0.6% of those calls.
The data was gathered between February 28 and June 20, 2002. 50 thousand calls were made in 30 cities and 10 road arteries in the Mainland, which includes call district capitals and urban areas of Lisbon and Oporto. The data was gathered in all islands of Azores and Madeira archipelagos.
704 hours were spent and 23 thousand kilometres were covered. The number of samples grew 25% as compared to the 2001 study and 113% as compared to 2000 studies.
The tests lasted for 215 hours in Greater Lisbon, 107 hours in Greater Oporto, 7 hour in cities with 50 thousand inhabitants or less, 10 hours in the cities with 50 to 100 thousand inhabitants and 14 hours in the cities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants. In the road arteries, 4 trips were made along each artery in order to make the sample more representative.
Each call lasted for one hundred seconds, a duration close to the average time of each call made by users.
The data was gathered between a terminal point of a mobile network and a terminal point of a fixed network and simultaneously for the three operators, ensuring thus an impartial analysis. The data was automatically gathered by specific equipment without any human intervention.
In accordance with the most recent statistical data, the number of mobile networks subscribers is more than 8 million. If we consider the diversity of terminal equipment available on the market and the subjectivity associated with each user, it is impossible to achieve the accurate reproduction of the interaction conditions of each consumer with the networks. In this context, the results of this study must be understood as an indicator of the global behaviour of these networks. Therefore, extrapolation into specific situations requires a certain degree of prudence.
Consult:
- GSM Mobile Networks - Quality of Service Survey https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=678618
