Our Belgian roads score better than the SNCB rail lines in terms of 4G quality. Old trains or new two-story models are the main culprits.
BIPT has updated its data portal with the latest figures on mobile network quality. In the new coverage maps, you can see that outdoor mobile coverage today is over 99 percent. Indoor 4G coverage is stranded at 93 percent. Mainly Walloon provinces pull that average down with Luxembourg (84 percent), Namur (87 percent) and Liège (89 percent).
To arrive at these figures, BIPT conducts its own monitoring tests over a full month. The result is more than 1.2 million data points per operator and per technology, accounting for 3,800 kilometers of testing.
For the first time, BIPT is also checking the quality of our mobile networks when we are on the train. Furthermore, the control body also drove around a lot on Belgian roads.
In-car call quality
The organization drove roughly 10,500 kilometers last year, accounting for 8,300 call tests and 55,000 data tests per mobile network. Those tests show that today you can count on a reliable connection in 99.7 percent of cases. When BIPT also delineates virtually uninterrupted telephone calls, we arrive at 99.8 percent.
The data tests also show high average speeds from our mobile networks, with an average download speed of 80 Mbps and an average upload speed of 25 Mbps.
Calling and internet on the train
For the first time ever, BIPT measured the call and Internet quality of our mobile networks on SNCB trains. A total of 2,200 km were covered. 800 call tests and 5,300 data tests were carried out per mobile network. The train lines to be tested were chosen based on the use of the lines. For example, only IC lines were tested. Each train line was tested at least twice, equally during peak and off-peak hours.
Quality on our railroads is worse than indoors. On average, a user can make a phone call 98.2 percent of the time. Older trains or new models with two floors negatively affect the range. The average speed is also lower than in the car: 55 Mbps download and 17 Mbps upload. Also keep in mind that the focus of this study is only on busy IC lines that are normally better provided with network coverage than other lines in our country.
As you can see above, we have to take national coverage with a grain of salt. Hopefully BIPT will consider a more complete method so as not to completely ignore the Kempen and province of Limburg, among others, in its next annual figures.
Those who would like to go through all the figures (car and train) in detail can go here. For an extensive analysis by BIPT around the whole project, click here.
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