
Sydney has the worst performing mobile network out of major Australian cities, according to global mobile data analyst Tutela, who just dropped a new report on 3G and 4G mobile quality. The report looked at the five most populated cities in Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide.
The key metric used to compare networks was "excellent consistent quality". This refers to what portion of a network is suitable for demanding activities, like streaming high definition video. Median download speed is a secondary metric.
Adelaide came out on top with an excellent consistent quality percentage of 88.8%, while Sydney placed last with a percentage of 86.1%.
Here are the full results:
Network performance across major cities
| Excellent Consistent Quality | Median Download Speed | |
|---|---|---|
| Adelaide | 88.8% | 26.8Mbps |
| Melbourne | 87.3% | 23.1Mbps |
| Brisbane | 86.4% | 24.6Mbps |
| Perth | 86.1% | 24.1Mbps |
| Sydney | 86.1% | 23.6Mbps |
Digging deeper, Telstra was found to have the highest excellent consistent quality percentage across all five cities, but was bested by Vodafone on median download speed in Melbourne. Here's a look how median download speeds compare across the five cities:
Median download speeds in major cities
| Telstra | Optus | Vodafone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adelaide | 29.1Mbps | 27.1Mbps | 23.9Mbps |
| Melbourne | 23.8Mbps | 22.1Mbps | 23.9Mbps |
| Brisbane | 25.7Mbps | 23.9Mbps | 24.0Mbps |
| Perth | 24.6Mbps | 24.6Mbps | 22.7Mbps |
| Sydney | 25.9Mbps | 23.8Mbps | 22.0Mbps |
Tutela's report was based on over 10 million speed tests and 133 million latency tests between the start of April and the end of September this year. These came from both Australia and New Zealand, but Tutela did not provide a further breakdown of how the tests were split between the two countries.
Alex Choros