The world champions of network performance

The tournament will provide its fair share of thrills to fans inside the stadiums as well as to countless millions tuning in to watch the games on a host of devices. And while we don’t know how the 32 teams will perform on the field leading up to the prestigious final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on July 15, we do know which country would come out victorious if there were a competition based on the overall network performance of the participating nations.

Data analysis

The data points we look at (Ericsson analysis on Speedtest Intelligence® data from Ookla®, January 1 to May 27, 2018), which evaluate the overall network performance of each country based on downlink, uplink and latency speeds, applies to more than 90 percent of the samples. Statistically, this means that for 90 percent of the time, the user will get this service quality or better.

Head-to-head

Using the exact format as for the upcoming football tournament in Russia, I thought it would be a fun idea to divide the same 32 countries into the same eight groups to see which two in each group would make it through to the last 16 knockout stage based on the overall performance of each nation’s network.

I then continued with this format through the quarterfinal stage, on to the semifinals and then to the final itself. You can check the network performance wallchart at the bottom of this blog to see how each country fares (the numbers in brackets next to the countries correspond to each country’s overall ranking).

Tournament newcomers but network masters

Iceland is making its debut in a world football tournament this year, but the country with a population of less than 350,000, is the clear world champion when it comes to the network speeds of the 32 teams going head-to-head in Russia this year.

In fact, Iceland comes out top in all three of the categories we have assessed: its downlink throughput rate of 17.9Mbps ensures that the country’s mobile users have a great experience, even for high-demanding services like HD video streaming.

When it comes to uplink performance, Iceland is again the champion, delivering a throughput of 5.5Mbps. The uplink is crucial for sharing own-produced content such as live video on social platforms and for streaming games directly from the stadium back to friends and family.

Finally, in the latency category, Iceland tops the list for a third time, with a mere 35 milliseconds. This aspect is important for apps and services that need a quick response time, like control, automation and VR/AR-related applications.

So, although I do not expect to see the Icelandic team standing holding the golden trophy in Moscow on July 15, although that would be a fantastic achievement (go Nordics!), the country bags a hat trick of victories when it comes to downlink throughput, uplink performance and latency to make it the undisputed winning nation in terms of network performance.

Check out the network performance wallchart below to see how your team progresses through the tournament:

Last 16

Denmark (2) v Croatia (8)
Egypt (10) v Portugal (18)
Spain (13) v Uruguay (16)
Iceland (1) v Australia (4)
Switzerland (5) v Sweden (9)
Belgium (3) v Senegal (26)
South Korea (7) v Serbia (6)
Poland (17) v England (10)

Quarterfinals

Denmark (2) v Egypt (10)
Switzerland (5) v Belgium (3)
Serbia (6) v England (10)
Spain (13) v Iceland (1)

Semifinals

Denmark (2) v Belgium (3)
Serbia (6) v Iceland (1)

Third-place match

Belgium (3) v Serbia (6)

Final

Denmark (2) v Iceland (1)

Winners

Iceland

Source: Ericsson analysis on Speedtest Intelligence® data from Ookla® (January 1 to May 27, 2018)

Did you know?

By the way, in case you missed the news, Ericsson has teamed up with Russian service provider MTS to provide a superior mobile experience to fans attending the global football tournament. You can read that story in full here.

Find out more information about current network performance around the world, as well as the trends that will drive the mobile industry over the next five years in the June 2018 edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report.