Last year was a big one for major network improvements, according to Opensignal, whose latest numbers show improving mobile video quality — particularly for both Verizon and Sprint (!) — while AT&T surged ahead in download speeds and won the category.
Despite the hype around 5G, LTE is still the dominant network technology that most users are leveraging. (Opensignal has found that only 1% of speed tests from 5G users in U.S. actually use an active 5G connection, in fact.)
Looking at operators’ LTE networks over a 90-day period in late 2019, Opensignal said that it “observed big increases in download and upload speeds across all four operators. But our AT&T and Sprint users saw the biggest gains in Download Speed Experience, and those using T-Mobile and AT&T the biggest gains in Upload Speed Experience.”
Verizon was the winner for video experience, which was notable in part because last year at this time, no operator had better than a “fair” rating from Opensignal on video experience. Both Verizon and Sprint have since moved into the “good” category, and while Verizon was the dominant winner, Opensignal said that “Sprint deserves to be recognized for its 16.8% jump from a Fair ranking of 47.5 in the July 2019 report to a Good ranking and a score of 55.5 points just six months later.” The company hypothesized that the improvement could be because of Sprint’s small cell and massive multiple-input multiple-output deployments.
In addition, Opensignal offered up its first analysis of U.S. voice app experience, taking a look at what kind of experience users get when they make a call in an app such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Skype. All four carriers scored in the “acceptable” range, with AT&T and T-Mobile US tying for the highest ranking.
T-Mobile US, meanwhile, widened its lead on its closest competitor in the upload speed category. The carrier has had consistently high performance in that area, with the closet competitor being Verizon. In Opensignal’s latest analysis, the average upload speed for a T-Mo user was 8.6 Mbps, which was an 18% increase from the previous round of analysis. Verizon registered a 14% increase in upload speed, but that wasn’t enough to gain ground on T-Mobile US.
On download speeds, AT&T took the crown, notching a win backed by major network improvements. Opensignal noted that it “predicted AT&T might take pole position in our July 2019 USA Mobile Network Experience report because we had been tracking AT&T’s rapid rise in download speed scores and technology investments.” In the six months since, Opensignal users on AT&T’s network “saw their download speeds increase 22% from 22.5 Mbps to 27.5 Mbps, making it the winner of the Download Speed Experience award.
“When we separate out AT&T users’ 4G Download Speeds from users’ 3G Download Speeds we see even more dramatic numbers,” Opensignal continued. “In 4G alone, AT&T clocks in with a Download Speed Experience of 29.1 Mbps, which is 10.6% faster than its next competitor, T-Mobile, which records a Download Speed Experience of 26.3 Mbps.”
Opensignal’s analysis is based on data from nearly 1.7 million devices and more than 5.3 million measurements, taken between September 16-December 14 of 2019. Read the full analysis here.Â
In other test news:
–Teledyne Technologies reported a record quarter for sales, with sales last quarter reaching $834.2 million, up 11.5% year-over-year.
Net income saw even more significant growth, reaching $115.7 million for the quarter, up 27% from the $91.1 million during the same quarter last year.
“For the second consecutive quarter, we achieved all-time record sales, earnings per share and cash flow,” said Robert Mehrabian, executive chairman, noted that it was Teledyne’s second consecutive quarter of all-time record sales, earnings per share and cash flow.
For the full year of 2019, sales $3.16 billion, up from $2.9 billion in 2018 — an increase of 9%. Profits for the full year, meanwhile, were up more than 20% to $402.3 million.
The company Instrumentation segment generated net sales for the fourth quarter of $301.6 million, up 14.5% year-over-year. Teledyne said that its test and measurement instrumentation saw lower sales compared the same period last year, to the tune of $4.9 million; that drop in T&M sales was offset by higher sales in other instrumentation segments such as marine and environmental instrumentation.
Teledyne subsidiary Teledyne LeCroy recently acquired California-based Oakgate Technology, which focuses on testing, validation and benchmarking for data centers and the electronic storage industry.
In other Teledyne news this week, the company has introduced an open-source software tool called SignalIntegrity which it says it aimed at offering “free tools for solving real-time signal integrity problems.” The company said that it has already seen more than 1,500 users download the Python-based software; it will hold a tutorial on the software at next week’s DesignCon.
–Anritsu has added 802.11ax support to its Wireless Connectivity Test Set WLAN Tester MT8862A, and says that the instrument is the “first WLAN tester that can evaluate signal quality at all data rates of major WLAN standards” from 802.11 a through ax, with a single instruments for radio frequency transmission testing. Measurements can be made in either network mode for “near real-world” conditions or direct mode for rapid evaluation of a device.
Anritsu also this week launched a new, single-port USB vector network analyzer that supports frequencies up to 43.5 GHz — which covers the primary millimeter wave bands currently being used for 5G mmWave deployments.
–National Instruments said that its authorized distributor in New Zealand and Australia, Braemac, will be broadening its scope to serve all of the current NI customers in the region, which is ” expected to help NI fortify and further its business in Australia and New Zealand.”
–Keysight Technologies has a new 5G channel emulation solution, PROPSIM FS16, with features designed to support the complexity of 5G massive MIMO designs. Features of the new channel emulator include a scalable number of fading channels (two to 1024), support for “realistic bi-directional fading to verify the up- and downlink of a device,” and a unidirectional fading capability that focuses on the downlink in order to test the device receiver.
In other Keysight company news, its Ixia says it has added new machine learning features to its Hawkeye active network monitoring platform that enables the platform to rapidly detect, identify and resolve network anomalies, to shorten network outages and improve up-time.
“Network operations teams struggle to correlate raw performance metrics with actual network problems. Hawkeye’s new machine learning capabilities offer insight into meaningful variations enabling these teams to quickly be alerted to real outages, congestion and application performance issues,” said Recep Ozdag, who is VP and GM of visibility at Keysight’s Network Applications & Security Group — formerly known as the Ixia Solutions Group.
