DATA COLLECTION METHODOLOGY

Our data is collected from end user devices running Android and iOS systems. All measurements are executed towards a CDN that has a large geographical footprint and hosts a significant part of the content that is being accessed by the users. This ensures our results are a good approximation of the user’s actual quality of experience.

All measurements must contain accurate location information using GPS or wi-fi geolocation methods. Measurements are considered only from the apps that have been approved by SpeedChecker. Submitted measurements are checked to see if they are within expected ranges and additional security precautions are implemented to ensure measurement data is not being manipulated.

The data collection process aims to deliver a single measurement sample from every device in our crowdsourcing system device pool and we strive to remove all duplicates. Due to privacy settings on some users phones we cannot reliably detect unique devices therefore some devices have contributed to more than 1 measurement into this dataset.

MEASUREMENT METHODOLOGY

The methodology is based on the concept of the ITU-T Q.3960 (2016) “Framework of Internet related performance measurements” and “Supplement 71 to ITU-T Q-series Recommendations”.

This test methodology aims at delivering an accurate measurement of the maximum bandwidth available over a given internet connection. This is achieved by transferring multiple parallel data streams over separate TCP connections within a predefined amount of time. The transferred data consists of randomly generated data with high entropy.

COVERAGE METHODOLOGY

SpeedChecker has developed a robust and reliable methodology of assessing cellular coverage worldwide. Our data-driven approach is using billions of cellular measurements conducted by hundreds of millions of mobile devices.

Process

SpeedChecker data analysis process for mobile coverage involves four primary steps: collection, filtering, spatial aggregation, and summarization. The results of that process are used to determine coverage score on a country and operator level.

Collection

Millions of cellular measurements are received daily from Android devices around the world.

Filtering

Filtering is applied to ensure that only relevant measurements are used:

• Erroneous out-of-range measurements are excluded from datasets
• Measurements executed by inactive devices are excluded
• Measurements with inaccurate location are excluded

Spatial Aggregation

Filtered multi-RAT signal measurements collected for last 12 months are grouped into tiles of approximately 1 km2. All tiles where at least one operator service was detected are summed up to form a total country coverage footprint. Average signal strength is calculated per tile per RAT for each operator. Each operator is then assigned with a score per tile depending on average signal strength and particular RAT availability (higher RAT and stronger signal will contribute a higher score).

Summarization

Finally, scores from all tiles are summed up per operator. This forms the total operator coverage score. Total operator coverage score is then divided by the total country coverage footprint to produce an overall OPERATOR COVERAGE SCORE.

*RAT – Radio Access Type