Colombia shows improvements in mobile, fixed services quality

The quality of mobile and fixed communication improved in Colombia from 2015 to 2017 in terms of dropped calls, latency and download speeds, according to a study carried out by telecoms regulator CRC.

The study involved quality of service measurements for mobile services in in the cities of Bogotá, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Medellín and Quibdó, and for fixed services in Bogotá, Cali, Cúcuta and Medellín.

CRC director Germán Darío Arías said that, "according to the results of the 2017 study, quality of mobile service is getting better and we're on the right track. However, there is still a lot to be done in fixed data."

Colombia is moving forward in its goal of setting minimum broadband speeds at 25Mbps in 2019.

MOBILE SERVICES

In terms of mobile services, in Bogotá the rate of dropped calls fell from 4.00% in mid-2015 to 1.15% in mid-2017. In Medellín, dropped calls fell from 7.37% to 3.40%; and in Bucaramanga, from 3.88% to 2.58%.

In terms of mobile data, in Bogotá, average download speeds increased to 10.54Mbps in 2017 from 9.36Mbps in mid-2016, while in Bucaramanga speeds rose more dramatically to 11.35Mbps from 7.46Mbps.

Bogotá and Medellín were more or less on a par in terms of latency at 176 milliseconds, whereas Barranquilla was at 255ms and Quibdó 708ms.

FIXED SERVICES

For fixed data services, download speeds in Bogotá rose to 5.1Mbps in mid-2017 from 4.3Mbps a year earlier. Speeds were similar in Cali and Medellín (5.1Mbps) and 4.3Mbps in Cúcuta.

Upload speeds for website was still slow at 1.5Mbps in mid-2017 from 102Mbps in mid-2016 in Bogotá, Cúcuta and Cali.

The companies measured for mobile services were Claro, Éxito, Avantel, Tigo, Uff, ETB, Virgin and Movistar.

For fixed services the operators measured were Telmex, ETB, UNE and Telefónica (Bogotá), UNE, Telmex (Medellín), Telmex, Emcali, UNE, Telefónica (Cali), and Telefónica, Telmex ETB and UNE (Cúcuta).