Good news for consumers. The telecoms policeman notes “a clear improvement in the quality of service in 2021 for all uses”. Better, the improvement is noticeable on all the territory. However, the devil is in the details.

Read alsoThe new balance of the French telecoms market

Indeed, overall, Orange is ahead of its competitors for all the criteria assessed (and there are many of them). The incumbent operator thus confirms its first place, followed by Bouygues Telecom.

The improvement is particularly visible for the results of web browsing tests and online video viewing, but the differences are sometimes significant between operators. Thus in large and medium-sized cities, Orange can display web pages in less than 5 seconds in 98% of cases, followed by Bouygues Telecom (96%), SFR (95%) then Free Mobile (93%); in rural areas, Orange (90%) is this time followed by Free Mobile (83%) then Bouygues Telecom and SFR (81%). Overall, this indicator, on average across all operators, has gained more than 8 points in rural areas compared to 2020.

For video, in the big cities, Bouygues Telecom comes first ahead of Orange, Free Mobile and SFR (90%). In intermediate and rural areas, Orange is in the lead, this time ahead of Free. The regulator multiplies the categories.

“The gaps between operators are narrowing and infrastructure competition is real and increasingly difficult. New technologies, in this case 5G, make it possible to recreate differentiation. We don't have the same strategies or the same territorial approaches”, observes Fabienne Dulac, CEO of Orange France.

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Free latest in 5G

The results are slightly different for 5G, due to the technological choices of the operators. Thus, Arcep points out that Orange offers the best downlink speeds in 5G, but the uplink speeds are equivalent to those of 4G. A little disappointing with regard to the promises made by the latest generation of mobile telephony.

In detail, Orange comes in first place with average 5G download speeds of 142 Mbit/s throughout France. Orange 5G users in dense areas, where most of their 5G sites are deployed, have an average of 227 Mbit/s. It is followed by SFR, with 84 Mbit/s on average throughout France and 145 Mbit/s only in dense areas, then Bouygues Telecom (71 Mbit/s on average, 130 Mbit/s in dense areas). Free is last with 31 Mbit/s on average, with little difference between dense areas and intermediate or rural areas.

“We are at the start of 5G. We started deploying it in 2021 and Orange covers 37% of the population. All in all, these results are encouraging. But they also show that deploying a network takes time and there is nothing to worry about on the subject”, observes Fabienne Dulac, CEO of Orange France.

At Free, we emphasize “that there is a subject around the protocol used, as Arcep also indicated in its communication and that these performances on the 5G speed are not reflected in the feedback from our subscribers, nor in the measurements made by others such as the nPerf or RNC Mobile barometer nor in the commercial dynamics over the quarter".

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