Mobile networks: UFC-Que Choisir denounces the worsening of the digital divide


A few months after the launch of its in-house speedtest, entitled Queldébit, UFC-Que Choisir delivers the first lessons to be learned about the quality of mobile networks offered to the general public and professionals. “While Arcep, to establish its ranking, performs thousands of measurements in all corners of the country, our new tool has given us the possibility of collecting, in just a few months, valuable data on the mobile connections of French people” , specifies in the preamble the association for the defense of consumers.

“The first observation is that the four mobile networks available in France do not really offer the same performance. Overall, that of Orange is well above average,” she argues. It underlines the fact that the incumbent operator’s network has offered the best speeds in recent months according to estimates from its application, and based on “thousands of speed tests”, with an average figure of 12.8 Mb / s down and 61.5 Mb/s up.

“These good results did not really surprise us. It must be said that with its nearly 20 million mobile telephony customers, the operator has an unrivaled strike force. Thanks to this decisive advantage, it was able to deploy a large number of antennas throughout the territory and obtain the most efficient frequencies during the auctions organized by Arcep”, argues the organization.

Orange gets the best of its competitors

For the latter, “the competitors of this undisputed leader compete for the other places on the podium”, even if, “depending on the criteria, the order varies”. As far as speeds are concerned, SFR stands out as Orange’s natural dolphin, with average speeds of 10.6 Mb/s downlink and 40.7 Mb/s uplink. The red-squared brand is ahead of Bouygues Telecom on this point (with averages estimated at 11.1 Mb/s downlink and 36.5 Mb/s uplink), as well as Free, which offers average speeds s amounting to 8.9 Mb/s going down and 37.5 Mb/s going up.

“Regarding the loading time of web pages, this time it is Bouygues that distances SFR and Free”, also notes the association, for which the “three challengers [d’Orange] are held in a pocket handkerchief”. UFC-Que Choisir, however, invites the general public to be wary of figures and to prefer an overall picture to orient themselves in the offers offered to them.

“On the one hand, these are national averages: depending on where you are, Orange may very well be overtaken by a competitor. On the other hand, the differences between the networks remain generally quite small. The real impact should ultimately remain relatively limited, even imperceptible,” she believes.

Networks of cities, networks of fields?

For the association, the other lesson to be learned from the first results of its speedtest is in highlighting the digital divide affecting France. “A gap separates the cities and the countryside in terms of performance,” she regrets, supporting figures.

“While the average download speed enjoyed by Orange customers residing in urban areas is 79 Mb/s (megabits per second), it is only 41 Mb/s in rural areas. As for the upstream speed, it goes from 16 to 9 Mb/s”, underlines the latter by way of example. The digital divide between rural and urbanized territories is also observed with regard to the loading of web pages. “According to our own results, at Orange, this is the case for 89% of web pages in rural areas and 96% in urban areas, a difference of 9 points. Except that 10 seconds for a web page to come up is a long time,” she says.

And to drive the point home by noting that “this disparity between telephony in cities and telephony in the fields is unfortunately not about to disappear, quite the contrary”. And if, “as the telecoms authority asserts, average speeds increase everywhere in France […] it is clear that they tend to rise faster in urban areas than in rural areas, which further aggravates the digital divide between territories”.

Towards a worsening of the digital divide?

“The problem is that the operators may boast of deploying 4G in the countryside, they continue to devote the vast majority of their investments to improving their service in dense regions”, regrets the association. of consumer protection. Among the explanations put forward by the organization is “the explosion of bandwidth-intensive uses, such as video or videoconferencing”.

In fact, fixed networks alone will not be enough to make up for the “holes in the racket” of mobile networks, even though the switchover period from copper to fiber which is about to take place over the next few years makes some people fear elected representatives from rural areas a worsening of the digital divide in certain regions already lacking connectivity. As for alternative solutions, such as satellite Internet, its use by the inhabitants of rural areas remains minor.

“If they even want to maintain their quality of service, they have no choice but to increase the capacities of existing antennas and add new ones. It is at this price that they can always boast of offering the best mobile network, ”concludes UFC-Que Choisir. It’s up to the operators to play.





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