“O2 has clearly taken advantage of this opportunity and in 2012 is once again a serious contender for customers. In telephony, O2 even takes second place ahead of Vodafone. In the cities, the Munich-based operator is level with Telekom in terms of reliability, (…).” That is this year’s result of the Connect network test.
As part of the Telefónica team, this result makes me a little proud as well. A great deal of criticism has been written about the o2 network in recent months. Certainly, mobile networks have been pushed to their limits by the smartphone boom of recent years. But all network operators in Germany face this problem.
I am curious to see how Vodafone will respond to what is almost a devastating result in the telephony category. To quote Connect:
“Good phone calls are possible only on Deutsche Telekom and O2; Vodafone and E-Plus achieve merely satisfactory results overall.”
The Connect test continues:
“Yet in 2012 Vodafone achieves a success rate of only just under 97 percent for voice connections in cities and surrounding areas; on motorways, as many as seven out of 100 calls encounter problems. This puts Vodafone behind O2 in third place in the ‘Telephony’ category and is unlikely to please business customers.”
According to this test result, Vodafone’s network is roughly as useful for business customers as E-Plus/Base. I hope this result shows our critics that “Telefónica Germany has done its homework”. And we do not need to hide when it comes to our data network either. Connect says:
“O2 and E-Plus have caught up significantly (…). Things looked very different last year.”
Here are the rankings in the telephony category:
- Telekom
- O2
- Vodafone
- E-Plus
Overall result:
- Telekom – Connect rating “very good” (441 points)
- Vodafone – Connect rating “good” (397 points)
- O2 – Connect rating “good” (381 points)
- E-Plus – Connect rating “satisfactory” (334 points)
