Finland State of Mobile Experience 2022

Introduction

In our annual benchmark report for Finland, we have evaluated 1.7 million speed and latency tests, conducted on the smartphones of real-world users of national mobile operators within Common Coverage Areas, between July and December 2021.

On the world stage, Finland has been one of the leaders when it comes to mobile network performance. It placed second out of 30, tying with South Korea for the Excellent Consistent Quality metric in Tutela’s annual Global State of Mobile Experience report for 2021 while all three Finnish operators made the top 30 operators list. Even so, the pandemic changed the way people consumed telecoms services and telecom operators as well as governments around the world have had to work harder to provide unparalleled consistent service to their customers.

A press release published by Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom, claims that approximately 47% of data consumed in the first half of 2021 was attributed to mobile subscriptions and the rest to fixed network subscriptions. To cater to this increasing demand and boost capacity, Finnish operators have undertaken various development initiatives — however, as is the trend in the telecom industry around the world, 5G deployment activities have been a point of focus.

In November 2021, Telia claimed to have launched the Nordic and Baltic regions’ first commercial Standalone 5G core network in partnership with Nokia. According to the press release, this network will initially be launched in 20 geographical areas across Finland with more rollout in future that will lower latency and include network slicing capabilities. Looking at 5G deployment for other operators, as of January 2022, Elisa reportedly provided 5G coverage in 153 locations while DNA was reportedly present in 142 locations covering 64% of Finland’s population.

In other news not related to 5G, Telia announced in June 2021 that it reached an agreement to sell 49% of its tower business in Finland and Norway to Brookfield and Alecta raising $824 million for the company. Further, in August 2021, DNA announced that it was planning to shut down 3G by the end of 2023 freeing up spectrum for 4G and 5G network connections. Also, in December 2021, Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom announced an invitation to submit bids for three spectrum licenses for 700 MHz frequency bands which will be technology-neutral. Although 3G shutdown and technology-neutral spectrum auctions are not directly related to 5G, they are certainly positive steps towards releasing valuable spectrum for 5G deployment.

Key findings

Telia leads in majority of the metrics tested
Telia dominated the leaderboard in almost all the metrics tested in this report. For overall Excellent Consistent Quality, Telia tied with DNA for first place, while it was the clear winner for overall Core Consistent Quality at 96.7%. On 5G, it had a three-way tie with the other two operators for Excellent Consistent Quality and statistically tied with Elisa for first place in the Core Consistent Quality category.
Additionally, Telia had the greatest total area coverage score at 553 points. In terms of Video Experience Score, it tied with Elisa for first place with a score of 4.09.
Elisa performs strongly in the Finnish telecoms market
Elisa continued to demonstrate a robust performance across all KPIs tested in this report. Although it ranked third for Excellent Consistent Quality and second for Core Consistent Quality overall, it did well for Consistent Quality results on a 5G network. It was in a three-way tie for Excellent Consistent Quality; while it shared first place with Telia for Core Consistent Quality on a 5G network.
In terms of coverage, it secured second position for total area coverage with a score of 526.
DNA remains a strong contender in Finland especially for 5G metrics
DNA proved to be a strong contender in Finland. While it tied for first place with Telia and Elisa for Excellent Consistent Quality on a 5G network, it was pushed to third place for Core Consistent Quality — both overall and 5G by a margin of less than 2%. Similarly, it missed second place in the coverage category by a margin of 25 points. For video experience, DNA missed first place by a mere 0.01 points.

Understanding this report

This report encompasses the following experience KPIs:

Excellent Consistent Quality - the percentage of the time that a network met the minimum recommended performance thresholds for HD video, group video conference calls and gaming
Core Consistent Quality - the percentage of the time that a network met the minimum recommended performance thresholds for lower performance applications including SD video, voice calls and web browsing
Coverage Score - the relative geographic coverage of an operator, compared with other operators, scored out of 1000 (please note that the score is not a representation of the percentage geographic coverage in a country)
Video experience - determined based on a range of video specific KPIs including stall rate, resolution and buffering time
5G Consistent Quality - how often Excellent Consistent Quality threshold was met while connected to a 5G network

To ensure a fair comparison between operator performance, Tutela limits the results used in our comparisons to those collected within Common Coverage Areas.

Learn more about our benchmarking methodology here.

Consistent Quality

In Common Coverage Areas across Finland, operator rankings were extremely close for Excellent Consistent Quality, Tutela’s metric for measuring connections good enough for demanding applications like 1080p video streaming, HD group video calling, and real time mobile gaming. Telia and DNA tied statistically for first place with Excellent Consistent Quality scores just above 89.0% while Elisa was close behind at 88.2%.

Looking at Core Consistent Quality, Tutela’s metric for when a mobile connection meets the requirements for use-cases like SD video streaming, social media sharing, and web browsing, results again were remarkably close. Telia was in the lead with a Core Consistent Quality of 96.7% followed by Elisa in second place at 95.8% with DNA close behind at 95.2%.

In Common Coverage Areas across Finland, results on 5G network had a similar trend as overall Consistent Quality performance. In terms of Excellent Consistent Quality, all three Finnish operators had results above the 90% mark with a three way tie between them. For Core Consistent Quality, Elisa and Telia tied for first place with DNA securing third position at 96.3%.

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KPI performance

The table below shows a breakdown of individual KPIs for each operator.

	DNA	Elisa	Telia
Download % above 5 Mbps	95.3%	95.4%	96.6%
Upload % above 1.5 Mbps	97.9%	96.5%	96.5%
Latency % below 50 ms	99.9%	99.9%	99.9%
Jitter % below 12 ms	99.0%	97.7%	99.1%
Packet discard % below 1%	98.2%	98.3%	97.4%

5G KPI performance

The table below shows a breakdown of individual KPIs for each operator for 5G only.

	DNA	Elisa	Telia
Download % above 5 Mbps	99.2%	99.2%	99.3%
Upload % above 1.5 Mbps	99.5%	98.7%	98.6%
Latency % below 50 ms	99.9%	99.9%	99.9%
Jitter % below 12 ms	99.4%	98.7%	99.1%
Packet discard % below 1%	97.5%	97.1%	97.4%

Finland

Introduction

Report statistics

Operators

Key findings

Mobile Experience Awards

Understanding this report

Consistent Quality

Consistent Quality

Coverage

Coverage

Video experience

Video streaming

KPI performance

5G KPI performance

Discover more insights for Finland