Evaluation study of the quality of service of broadband Internet access

This report presents the results of the study, carried out for the third consecutive year, evaluating the quality of broadband Internet access services in Portugal, from the perspective of the user, between 5 November and 21 December 2008, for mobile access, and between 30 October 2008 and 8 February 2009 for fixed access. The study was prepared and conducted by ANACOM in partnership with QMETRICS and with the collaboration of FCCN - Fundação para a Computação Científica Nacional (Foundation for National Scientific Computing).

Among the main conclusions of the study, it is noted that the trends in download speeds achieved for international servers, for both types of access (fixed and mobile), are converging. With regard to upload speeds it is seen that the speeds of mobile technology are higher than those provided by fixed technology. It was also found that, in general, with fixed access, the average time taken to download pages was less than with mobile technology, although, for both types of access, the figures are well within the comfort threshold, providing a decent web browsing experience. The main differentiating factor between the fixed and mobile technologies in terms of results, is network latency (delay in transmission of IP packets), which has a significant impact on interactive applications such as VoIP and online gaming.

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