Doha: A report issued by Ookla, a global leader in network intelligence and connectivity insights, praised the performance of the mobile phone network and the Internet during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, pointing out that the network was not affected by the increasing number of users during the tournament.
In a report, it said that there were no problems or disturbances in the Internet, despite the network’s performance reaching its peak.
The report pointed out: “Ahead of the event, we outlined the important role of the Qatar Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) and both Ooredoo Qatar and Vodafone Qatar in driving performance gains in the market. A competitive, pro-investment market environment has paid dividends, coupled with firm commitments from both operators to roll out commercial 5G networks in all densely populated areas and all venues associated with the FIFA World Cup.”
“As of December 3, 2022, after almost two weeks and 48 games, the FIFA World Cup has seen over 2.45 million cumulative stadium attendees. For a country with a population of 2.93 million, ensuring mobile network performance meets expectations has been no easy feat. Ookla was eager to understand how Qatari mobile networks were handling the deluge of visitors and additional traffic. According to Speedtest Intelligence, median download performance in November rose to 263.37 Mbps on modern chipsets across all mobile technologies combined, with median 5G download performance hitting 472.13 Mbps.”
“Fans visiting Qatar for the World Cup have benefited from the offer of local SIMs from national mobile operators Ooredoo and Vodafone, which include free data. Ooredoo SIMs include 2022 MB of data for free, valid for 3 days, while Vodafone customers have access to 3GB of data for free, valid across 2 days.
Encouraging visitors to utilize local SIMs has helped provide superior network performance for fans at the World Cup. In addition, it’s clear that the network enhancements made by Ooredoo and Vodafone, and their live monitoring and optimization of network performance using crowdsourced data, has helped boost overall network performance at the event, despite the deluge of fans and resulting data traffic.”
“We used Speedtest Intelligence data to observe performance in the lead up to, and during the FIFA World Cup. 5G performance increased from a median download of 394.2 Mbps and upload of 19.93 Mbps 10 weeks before the event, while hitting a median download speed of 489.29 Mbps and median upload speed of 38.36 Mbps during the second week of the World Cup. Ooredoo and Vodafone have played a crucial role in driving increased 5G performance at the World Cup with both mobile network operators neck-and-neck in terms of 5G download performance,” the report explained.
The report said comparing mobile network performance during the first two weeks of the World Cup to other major sporting events in the region and further afield shows just how impressive 5G network performance has been so far, given the number of attendees. “While not the fastest sporting event on record, the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 ranks highly, well ahead of events such as the French Open and Wimbledon.”
Ooredoo, FIFA’s Official Global Connectivity Services Provider for the event, has been very vocal on the improvements it has made to its network and operations. Ooredoo has rolled out additional macro cell sites and small cells to cater to data traffic around the stadiums, and has also deployed over 5,000 cell sites to offer sufficient network coverage across mobile technologies within the stadiums.
“Using Speedtest Intelligence data to analyze network performance across Qatar’s World Cup stadiums for both Ooredoo and Vodafone combined, we see that Al Janoub Stadium recorded the fastest median 5G download performance at 757.77 Mbps, and that all World Cup stadiums recorded median 5G speeds over 400 Mbps Of the most popular fan sites, the Ras Bufontas and Airport Free Zone recorded the highest 5G performance,” Ookla said.
.