PARTNER CONTENT: Sylwia Kechiche is a Senior Director of Industry Analysis at Opensignal. She leads the Market Insights analyst team in delivering data-driven insights and thought leadership. Before joining Opensignal, she was the Principal Industry Analyst at Ookla. Prior to that, she worked as the Principal Analyst for IoT and Enterprise at GSMA Intelligence, where she managed IoT and Enterprise products.
Sylwia will take the stage as a panellist at MWC 2025 for the session “FWA: A 5G Success Story, But How Far Can It Go?” on Tuesday, March 4th, from 10:45 to 11:45 at the Marconi Stage in Hall 6.
What are the top trends in the broadband and wireless industries, and please explain your role in analysing these?
The telecoms industry will continue to navigate a complex landscape marked by both challenges and opportunities. Key trends include the rise of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) as a viable 5G application, slower than expected adoption of standalone 5G due to high costs and limited use cases, and fibre connectivity delivering reliable, high-speed broadband. Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) continues to dominate strategies globally, playing a twofold role: as a defensive tool to protect market share through bundling in mature markets and as a catalyst for broadband expansion, unlocking growth opportunities by reaching underserved populations in emerging markets. Bridging the digital divide and implementing cost-effective network optimisations will remain critical.
At Opensignal, we remain steadfast in our commitment to empowering operators with actionable insights that address these evolving challenges. By analysing and prioritising real-world user experience metrics, we enable operators to refine their strategies, enhance customer satisfaction and unlock sustainable business growth in an increasingly competitive environment. Our focus is on equipping the telecoms industry with the intelligence needed to navigate this era of transformation strategically and effectively.
Over recent years, we’ve seen a shift in customer priorities. Speed was once the primary factor in their decision-making, but reliability is taking precedence now. What is driving this change?
In today’s connected world, reliability has overtaken speed as the top priority for consumers. With most daily activities happening online, such as online document-sharing, streaming and ride-hailing, staying connected is now critical. An Opensignal household survey highlights this trend, emphasising the growing demand for stable, uninterrupted networks. Real-time, two-way tasks like connected gaming and video calling have further underscored the need for consistent, reliable connectivity.
To succeed, operators must focus on delivering dependable, seamless experiences, which is now essential to retaining subscribers in an increasingly competitive market.
From what you’re saying, it seems like traditional network performance metrics aren’t telling the full story anymore. So how can the industry benefit from a more accurate reflection of real-world network experience?
Traditional network metrics like speed only capture one dimension of network performance and generally fall short of representing how networks perform in real-world conditions. Opensignal’s network experience metrics fill this gap by offering a more holistic measure of network performance. These metrics analyse everything from network reliability to mobile gaming experiences and help operators more fully understand true user experience across their markets. One particularly useful Opensignal metric, Consistent Quality (CQ), assesses whether a network can seamlessly support common mobile applications by factoring in not just download and upload speeds, but also latency, jitter and packet loss. By combining these metrics, CQ provides a comprehensive view of the actual user experience. This empowers operators to pinpoint areas for improvement, prioritise enhancements and deliver the reliability that today’s consumers demand.
You highlighted the connection between poor network experience and higher churn rates in a recent whitepaper. Could you elaborate on this and explain how operators can leverage Opensignal’s insights to reduce churn?
Our analysis of dozens of global markets reveals a clear link between network experience and churn. Churn rates drop significantly when users have an Excellent Consistent Quality (ECQ) score of 80% or higher. For example, in the UK, churn rates on poor-performing networks were double those of high-performing ones. To put it into perspective, in the U.S., where each of the top three mobile operators has more than 100 million subscribers, even a small 0.2 percentage point difference in churn can translate into millions of subscribers gained or lost, underscoring the financial impact of network performance.
Opensignal’s insights help operators benchmark their performance against competitors, identify areas for improvement and track where churned customers are migrating. By leveraging these insights, operators can take targeted actions to address network weaknesses, enhance the overall user experience and foster greater customer loyalty.
In these financially challenged times, are there any cost-effective solutions that operators can implement to enhance the customer experience?
Operators can enhance customer experience cost-effectively by addressing poorly configured CDNs, spectrum misallocations, or router configuration issues.
Mobile operators can use network analytics to identify congestion hotspots and implement targeted improvements. By leveraging data-driven insights, operators can prioritise impactful solutions, and deliver better reliability and user experience with limited investment.
For operators looking to future-proof their networks, what areas should they focus on now to keep customers satisfied and how should they deal with customer expectations evolving over time?
Operators looking to future-proof their networks should focus on making targeted network improvements that most improve user satisfaction. While these experiences can be difficult to pinpoint, and can vary by operator and geography, Opensignal has often seen a close correlation between time with no signal and subscriber churn. Our data also points out that a higher ECQ score, as mentioned before, has a positive impact on user loyalty. So, if operators can ensure these critical components of their network are optimised, consistently monitored and effectively managed across their key markets, it will likely bode well for their ability to maintain strong customer satisfaction.
Of course, that’s just a starting point. A deep, holistic understanding of user experience is critical to success. By leveraging data-driven insights to identify the evolving needs of their customers, from video and gaming experiences to network reliability, operators can prioritise improvements that deliver the greatest impact. Building networks with flexibility and scalability at their core will enable operators to adapt quickly to changing technologies and expectations, ensuring they remain agile, competitive and well-prepared to meet future demands.
What’s the most important takeaway for operators and ISPs looking to improve their network experience and market performance in the current landscape?
Network operators must prioritise data-driven decision-making to identify key areas for improvement and focus on actions that deliver the greatest impact. By leveraging advanced analytics, from high-level dashboards to detailed metrics like CQ, they can address network issues proactively, enhance user experience, reduce churn and foster long-term customer loyalty. Actionable insights are the foundation for staying competitive in an evolving market.
Here’s a quick example: Opensignal has helped operators identify areas where network outages are happening in multiple instances. This analysis has helped both network teams react quickly to rectify technical issues, and commercial teams understand how the outages affected subscriber behaviour and take appropriate action to ensure consumer loyalty and retain their base. Had they not taken quick action on both sides of the organisation, it would have left them vulnerable to competitive conquesting.
As previously mentioned, we have also seen deep correlations between experience metrics like ECQ and subscriber churn, so a consistent understanding of how those experiences compare to the competition is critical for staying ahead of the market.
Finally, you’ll be at MWC25 Barcelona. What can attendees and the industry expect from Opensignal at the event, and in the coming year?
We’re thrilled to showcase our latest innovations at MWC25, demonstrating how Opensignal delivers a holistic view of network experience, its influence on market performance and why experience is so much more than just an understanding of upload or download speeds. Attendees can expect to explore new solutions, insights, and technologies designed to empower mobile operators and ISPs to drive meaningful business impact. We’re also eager to engage with industry leaders, learn about their visions for the future and strengthen our role in supporting the global evolution of connectivity. We look forward to connecting with industry leaders and learning about their future plans, so we can continue to support the evolution of connectivity worldwide.