A new survey conducted by the National Independent Wireless Broadband Quality Report (NIWBQR) has rated Globacom as the best 4G LTE services provider in the Lagos area.
NIWBQR is an arm of Enextgen Wireless Ltd, a network engineering services company, which specialises in providing national broadband quality of experience report on mobile wireless communication services in Nigeria.
The independent body explained that its research examined the quality of user experience as well as the technical quality of the 4G networks in Lagos. It also disclosed that it purchased SIMs with unlimited data and unlimited throughput from the five service providers included in the report in order to perform simultaneous FTP data transfers and Pings on all their networks. The other service providers studied were MTN, Smile, nTel and Estream.
“The throughputs and other performance measurement indicators recorded are therefore those that any customers with similar subscriptions are likely to experience,” the NIWBQR said.
It added that wide-ranging driving test was done around Victoria Island using various tools including mobile phones, scanner, GPS Receiver and logging tool. Types of data collected included latency (packet delay), continuous uplink file transfer and continuous downlink file transfer, among others.
At the end of the survey, NIWBQR said, Globacom’s 4G LTE services came out best, followed by Smile. According to the research firm, Globacom was rated first because its services stood out in uplink and downlink application layer throughput. Throughput refers to the amount of data moved successfully from one place to another in a given time period. This is measured in bits per second (bps), megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps), the report explained.
According to the body, Globacom had excellent RF coverage and quality, without any common Radio Frequency (RF) performance issues such as RRC Call Drops, RRC Connection Failures, Handoff failures, excessive call setup delays, amongst other indicators.
Smile came second in the report, even though it had lower uplink and downlink application layer throughput than most due to an undeclared throughput. The body said Smile was ranked higher than MTN and because it has a higher service accessibility rate than MTN and better coverage than nTel.
As for MTN, the body said the shortcoming observed was that the operator “lacked contiguous LTE service along the driven route”.
“As such, some of the application layer throughput recorded for MTN was in 3G”, NIWBQR concluded.