Arcep has just published the results of its 23rd annual survey on the quality of mobile services in France. A valuable barometer that allows you to know which are the best telephone operators of the moment.
The Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Posts and Press Distribution (Arcep) unveiled the results of the 23e edition of its annual survey on the quality of mobile operator services, which is based on the analysis of 505 performance criteria with more than one million measurements in 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G in all metropolitan departments, from the end of May to the end of August 2022. All aspects have been scrutinized: quality of calls, SMS exchanges, speeds, video streaming, file sharing, etc. Despite a slight drop in speeds, the quality of mobile services remains stable overall. And it’s Orange, for the 12th year in a row, which stands out by far as the best operator on the market! Its rivals were not discouraged however – their press releases testify – and were sometimes rewarded for their number of subscribers or the total consumption of their customers, for example. Bouygues was delighted to be the “first alternative mobile operator”while Free Mobile is the “first alternative operator for real data use”. SFR, on the other hand, has not really shown itself, and has not made a statement for the moment.
Arcep 2022 survey: Orange again voted best operator in France
Orange largely dominates its competitors, and comes 1st or tied for 1st out of 476 criteria – out of 505 in total. Even in rural areas, it is 92 times 1st or tied for 1st out of the 94 criteria measured. For the quality of audio calls in dense areas, Orange is in the lead with two-minute calls without audible disturbances in 93% of cases. Bouygues obtains the same result, but SFR and Free Mobile do less well, with 91% and 87%. Same ranking for rural and intermediate areas. As for viewing streaming videos, Orange provides 98% of videos viewed in perfect quality in dense areas, compared to 97% for Bouygues, 94% for Free and 93% for SFR. For intermediate and rural areas, Orange achieves 96% and 89% respectively, compared to 90% and 78% for Bouygues, 91% and 85% for Free Mobile – which is doing better – and 88% and 78% for SFR, always dead last.
In terms of download speeds, the difference is very visible since Orange has an average speed of 143 Mbit/s throughout the country – 217 Mbit/s in dense areas, 170 Mbit/s in intermediate areas and 51 Mbit/s s in rural areas. Bouygues posted an average of 84 Mbit/s throughout mainland France, and SFR an average of 85 Mbit/s. Free finished dead last with an average of 64 Mbit/s.
Arcep 2022 survey: performance under the sign of the heat wave
As we can see, Orange’s three competitors are struggling to compete, even if, in certain areas, they manage to hold their own and seriously hound number 1. Overall, Orange is closely followed by Bouygues, while that SFR and Free Mobile are lagging behind and fighting for last place. The other aspect that is obvious is that, even if it is gradually closing, the digital divide is still there. Users who live in highly urbanized cities receive much better service than people living in rural areas.
Arcep noted an interesting fact. By combining the measurements of downlink speeds in 3G, 4G and 5G, we obtain an average of 94 Mbit/s, which is a good improvement compared to the 82 Mbit/s of 2021. On the other hand, if we only take the speeds in 3G and 4G, the average is down with a drop from 71 Mbit/s in 2021 to 63 Mbit/s this year. Arcep explains it by the high temperatures that hit this summer, because they caused localized peaks in attendance – in tourist areas, for example – which themselves caused an overwork of the networks, degrading their quality. On the contrary, the 2021 measurements were carried out when there were movement restrictions due to Covid-19 – by moving less, users placed less strain on the networks. In addition, the data could be distorted by the heat, because, when the temperature is too high, the capacities of the smartphone are reduced.