Systemics-PAB started Orange Data Services Benchmarking and Optimization (DSBO) 2021 network measurements and assessment with 5G measurements included. These drive tests of mobile networks provide Systemics’ customers tools for maintaining the highest standards of telecommunication services quality and customer experience. The scoring mechanism embedded in the service offers the assessment of the situation and stimulates competitiveness. The year 2021, is the sixth time in row that Systemics-PAB has conducted the annual assessment of mobile networks as a part of the Orange DSBO project in Belgium, Luxemburg, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.

Belgium was the first country where Systemics-PAB delivered an extensive benchmarking campaign to measure the quality of mobile telecommunication services offered by mobile network operators.  The benchmarking measurements took place between May 11th and May 22nd 2021 and covered representative areas of Belgium including most important cities and roads. The total distance covered by each of the 2 drive test cars used was over 5000 km. Measurements took close to 80 hours delivering ~2400 voice tests and ~1500 for each of data services tests. All the tests were conducted using the SwissQual (Rohde & Schwarz Group) benchmarking solution installed in the roof boxes of the measurement cars. The test area was designed to cover cities and connecting roads (with villages along the roads) that constituted around 50% of the Belgian population.

The quality assessment and the comparison between operators was prepared using the ETSI Technical Report 103559 Annex B approach. It fulfils market needs for open and “standardized” countrywide mobile network benchmarking and scoring. TR103599 provides for results which are transparent as to how the actual scoring has been achieved including methods and underlying assumptions. In assessing the overall performance and overall score of each mobile network, 2 main categories of services (with subcategories) have been evaluated:

  • Voice services, affecting 40% of the overall score
  • Data services, affecting 60% of the overall score

The experienced quality of service varies over time so that the individual score of a particular throughput cannot be fixed once and for all. In order to reflect 5G implementation values for data KPIs, thresholds were adopted and bigger files were used for emulation of receiving/sending attachments (fixed size file DL/UL test).

Using the applied scoring methodology, the highest number of points in overall scoring was achieved by Orange and was equal to 946,7 out of the 1000 maximum achievable. The other operators scored 945,9 and 935,6. Orange achieved the best score in both voice and data tests.

Orange Belgium N.V. can therefore be certified as the operator with the highest overall quality of mobile services in the test.

More details on results can be found in the attached document.
pdf-ico  DSBO Belgium H1 2021 – Nationwide Benchmark Certificate and Results (650 KB)