Canadian measurement specialist Tutela conducted a three-month survey of Australian mobile operators. 

Based on this survey, Vodafone and Telstra were statistically tied for first place when it comes to consistent quality thresholds, both rated as excellent by the responders. However, Vodafone had the highest core consistent quality according to the recently released survey results.

In terms of the upload speed, the survey also found that Vodafone also had the fastest and best one-way latency result. On the other hand, Telstra had the fastest download speeds.

Tutela Test Survey Results

The findings of Tutela were based on around 15 billion measurements along with 1.62 million speed tests. Both measurements and tests were conducted between the first of January and the 31st of March this year.

In its commentary, Tutela said, “In common coverage areas across Australia, Vodafone and Telstra statistically tied for first place with the highest Excellent Consistent Quality, over 83% of connections having a network experience suitable for use-cases like 1080p video streaming, real-time mobile gaming or HD video calling. Optus was in third place with an Excellent Consistent Quality of 80.3%.”

In this case, Vodafone was slightly ahead of Telstra on this measure by a factor of 83.4% to 83.1%, according to the results of the survey.

“In regards to Core Consistent Quality, Tutela’s metric for when a connection is good enough for web browsing, social media sharing and SD video streaming, all three operators reached the 90% threshold, with Vodafone narrowly out in front with a Core Consistent Quality of 93.1%,” Tutela added.

Speed and Performance

When it comes to the fastest median download speeds in common coverage areas across Australia, Telstra’s average was 29.4Mbps, according to Tutela. Optus landed second place with an average of 27.9Mbps, which was only 1.5Mbps slower than Telstra. Landing the third top spot is Vodafone with 24.4Mbps, which was only 5Mbps slower than Telstra.

In terms of the median upload speeds in common coverage areas across Australia, Vodafone was the fastest with an average speed of 14.6Mbps. Landing second place was Telstra with an average median speed of 12.8Mbps. Optus makes it to the third spot with an average median speed of 10.5Mbps.

The report further highlighted that “Vodafone narrowly managed to have the most responsive network in common coverage areas across Australia with a one-way latency result of 13.5ms, with both Optus and Telstra less than 2ms behind Vodafone.”

According to the report, there was also a fascinating difference between the two leading mobile plans and handset providers, particularly when it comes to network performance.