If you’ve been at a Women’s World Cup (WWC) game this season, and you’ve used your phone during the game, you may have noticed better phone signal. Opensignal, a global network analysis company, has just finished surveying the WWC stadiums being used in Australia, and has found that across the board, speeds are much faster than the national average.
At the stadiums, Telstra came out on top when it came to download and upload speeds, while both Telstra and Vodafone tied for 5G availability. Average download speeds at the stadiums went up to 85.1Mbps, about 48.5 per cent higher than the national average (57Mbps). Meanwhile, upload speeds on average clocked in at 12.9Mbps, while the national average is 8.5Mbps.
Additionally, people with 5G-enabled smartphones and plans also spent nearly 38 per cent more time at the stadium connected to an active 5G connection when compared to the Australian average.
“There is a much starker difference in the time users spend on Wi-Fi than there is in 5G usage. At the stadiums, users spend much less time connected to Wi-Fi than they do nationally, which highlights the importance of the 5G experience inside stadiums. Users spend just 15.4 per cent of time on Wi-Fi at the stadiums compared with 50.1 per cent nationally,” Opensignal wrote.
It’s no surprise that the mobile experience is much better at Australia’s biggest stadiums. These stadiums attract international visitors, and for the WWC and events similar to it, with the huge number of people all condensed within one place, potentially recording on their phones and posting to social media, networks operating in the space need to be up to scratch.
In this case, they appear to be outperforming the capability of their networks when compared to the Australian average, thank you Optus, Telstra, and Vodafone.
You can read the full WWC report on the Opensignal website.