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Mobile Networks Update: Mexico (April 2018)
AT&T continues its remarkable growth in Mexico, winning Opensignal's top prize for 4G availability in the country, although our measurements show the operator's 4G speeds actually fell in the six months since our last State of Mobile Networks report. Rising competition following AT&T's debut is driving rapid 4G rollout in Mexico. This is likely to be reflected in the bidding war in the mobile licence auction due to be held in the country later this year as operators look to gain spectrum support the demand for 4G. In our first Mobile Networks Update for Mexico we have tracked all of the changes in our 3G and 4G metrics since our last visit.
- AT&T won our 4G availability award in Mexico, taking the crown from Telcel which was top in our last report six months ago. AT&T's average 4G availability across the country grew to 81.4% in our December–February test period, up from 75% six months earlier, while Telcel's grew to 78.3% from 76.4% in our measurements. Third-placed Movistar also grew its 4G availability slightly to 65.8% from 65.1%, according to our tests.
- In terms of 4G speeds, Telcel took the top spot in our metric, while our measurements showed that AT&T's average download speed actually fell slightly to 21.7 Mbps from 22.8 Mbps six months earlier. This is a phenomenon we have seen elsewhere as mobile networks struggle to cope with a sharp increase in subscribers and growing data use. AT&T's drop allowed Telcel to take Opensignal's award for 4G speed as it increased its average download rate to 25.9 Mbps from 23.5 Mbps in our measurements. The honours were shared between AT&T and Telcel in October.
- Telcel's 4G speed growth was also reflected in our regional measurements, where the operator took the lead in Mexico City, with an average download speed of 23.9 Mbps, beating AT&T's 20.3 Mbps, according to our tests. The award for fastest 4G in the capital was shared by the two operators in our last report. Telcel also achieved the fastest average 4G speed out of all of our regional metrics, achieving 35.5 Mbps in Guadalajara, significantly ahead of AT&T's 23.6 Mbps in the region. However, AT&T took the 4G speed award in our regional metric in Monterrey with an average of 28.6 Mbps, ahead of Telcel's 22.1 Mbps. AT&T also came top in Monterrey in our overall speed metric, which factors in the combined speeds of operators' 3G and 4G networks and the level of access to each technology. This metric was won by Telcel in Guadalajara, while in Mexico City the award was shared between the two operators.
- Nationally, Telcel showed signs of catching up with AT&T in our overall download speed metric. AT&T remained the national leader in this category with average speeds of 16.5 Mbps, followed by Telcel with 14.9 Mbps. However Telcel saw its tested overall speeds jump by over 60% up from 9.2 Mbps since our last report six months ago, while AT&T saw slower growth of some 15% from 14.3 Mbps in our measurements.
Opensignal Awards Table
 | Download Speed: 4G | Download Speed: 3G | Download Speed: Overall | Latency: 4G | Latency: 3G | Availability: 4G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
AT&T |
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Movistar | ||||||
Telcel |
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Performance by Metric
Download Speed: 4G
Download Speed: 3G
Download Speed: Overall
Latency: 4G
Latency: 3G
Availability: 4G
Download Speed: 4G
This metric shows the average download speed for each operator on LTE connections as measured by Opensignal users.
Download Speed: 3G
This metric shows the average download speed for each operator on 3G connections as measured by Opensignal users.
Download Speed: Overall
This metric shows the average download speed experienced by Opensignal users across all of an operator's 3G and 4G networks. Overall speed doesn't just factor in 3G and LTE speeds, but also the availability of each network technology. Operators with lower LTE availability tend to have lower overall speeds because their customers spend more time connected to slower 3G networks.
Latency: 4G
This metric shows the average latency for each operator on LTE connections as measured by Opensignal users. Latency, measured in milliseconds, is the delay data experiences as it makes a round trip through the network. A lower score in this metric is a sign of a more responsive network.
Latency: 3G
This metric shows the average latency for each operator on 3G connections as measured by Opensignal users. Latency, measured in milliseconds, is the delay data experiences as it makes a round trip through the network. A lower score in this metric is a sign of a more responsive network.
Availability: 4G
This metric shows the proportion of time Opensignal users have an LTE connection available to them on each operator’s network. It's a measure of how often users can access a 4G network rather than a measure of geographic or population coverage.
Regional Performance
This chart shows the regional winners in each category Opensignal measures. Click on the icons to see a more detailed graph showing each operator’s metrics in a particular region.
Legend:
T
Telcel
M
Movistar
A
AT&T | Region | Download Speed: 4G | Download Speed: 3G | Download Speed: Overall | Availability: 4G |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mexico City | ||||
| Guadalajara | ||||
| Monterrey |
Our Methodology
Opensignal measures the real-world experience of consumers on mobile networks as they go about their daily lives. We collect 3 billion individual measurements every day from tens of millions of smartphones worldwide.
Our measurements are collected at all hours of the day, every day of the year, under conditions of normal usage, including inside buildings and outdoors, in cities and the countryside, and everywhere in between. By analyzing on-device measurements recorded in the places where subscribers actually live, work and travel, we report on mobile network service the way users truly experience it.
For this particular report, 1,794,457,870 datapoints were collected from 120,584 users during the period: 2017-12-01 - 2018-02-28.
We continually adapt our methodology to best represent the changing experience of consumers on mobile networks and, therefore, comparisons of the results to past reports should be considered indicative only. For more information on how we collect and analyze our data, see our methodology page.
For every metric we've calculated statistical confidence intervals and plotted them on all of the graphs. When confidence intervals overlap for a certain metric, our measured results are too close to declare a winner in a particular category. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners.
Opensignal Limited retains ownership of this report including all intellectual property rights, data, content, graphs & analysis. Reports produced by Opensignal Limited may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed, published for any commercial purpose (including use in advertisements or other promotional content) without prior written consent.