For the sixth time running, Optus has claimed the fastest 5G download speeds in Australia, according to the latest report from OpenSignal.
Between January and March this year, Optus averaged 5G download speeds of 208.7Mbps, comfortably ahead of Telstra’s 180.1Mbps. Lagging behind in third place was Vodafone, registering average speeds of 137.9Mbps. However, Vodafone was the only telco to see an increase between reporting periods, boosting its 5G performance by 36Mbps.
These findings come courtesy of the Australian Mobile Network Experience Report, published every six months by OpenSignal, a global network insights company. Optus has led local telco 5G speeds for the past six reports now.
Optus tops 5G speed: what else?
Interestingly, Optus also topped the Consistent Quality category, previously won by Vodafone. The category measures a network’s ability to reliably sustain common mobile usage across various tasks. As expected, Optus took a nose-dive during the national November 2023 outage. However, the telco has since rebounded to deliver better performance than before the outage.
Telstra took out the Coverage Experience categories, which is unsurprising given its nation-leading 99.5% network coverage. This also included a sizable lead over other telcos for 5G coverage. Optus and Vodafone could flip this on its head come 2025, with a proposed network-sharing deal potentially fast-tracking 5G availability.
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Despite being the smaller of the big three telcos, Vodafone still managed to lead a few categories in the latest report. Across both recorded download and upload speeds, Vodafone led the way. Users averaged 68.5Mbps download speeds across all network types, more than 10Mbps faster than Telstra and Optus. Meanwhile, its industry-leading 10.8Mbps average upload speeds again highlight the discrepancy between download and upload speeds in Australia.
There’s a lot of activity in the Australian telco space at the moment. The looming 3G network shutdown has people scrambling to update devices, while solutions to future nationwide outages are being explored.
As always, you can compare the cheapest SIM plans to find the best deal and a plan that suits your needs.
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