COVID-19 impact: Monitoring on European residential networks

This article is a compilation of our series of articles related to the state of residential fixed networks during the COVID-19 pandemic and how lockdown measures imposed by governments have impacted on the quality of experience and network performance in European households. 

Broadband has played a crucial role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic all over the world while keeping businesses, governments and communities connected and running. This unprecedented situation makes us realize the importance of a robust network performance for customer satisfaction. 

In this regard, fixed residential networks have experienced a significant increase in Internet usage over the last months due to mobility restrictions, lockdown measures and work-from-home policies. Some telecommunication services have suffered with low-speed copper-based connections or poor Wi-Fi in-home performance, and struggled to deliver streaming content, video calls or in general simultaneous connections with sufficient quality.

MedUX has been closely monitoring the impact of COVID-19 protective measures on the Customer Experience and residential fixed broadband performance in European households. Hundreds of metrics are being collected in real time (24/7), from the end-user perspective, not only for the service performance through Ethernet, but also for the Wi-Fi performance. 

Users in countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Spain saw their Internet experience somehow affected, partially and/or temporarily. This mostly happened during the first months of lockdown and during some recent days of the Season Holidays or in areas with hard preventive measures. 

However, operators all over Europe have been working hard to maintain the service quality and Internet usage experience, and in general terms, Internet service has been, and still is, stable in these markets.

Lockdown’s impact on fixed broadband network performance in Europe

MedUX experts have been analyzing these insights in detailed reports to have a general overview of the lockdown’s impact on fixed broadband network performance, as well as all our insights into how the Customer Experience was affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and the increase of work from home measures. Do not hesitate to download our series report by country:

• Italy: Italian networks were strained since the government imposed mobility restrictions in the country. According to MedUX insights, although there were not service disruptions, Internet connections in Italy seem to have slightly slowed down, and basic parameters were affected.

• Germany: German networks showed a slight degradation in key quality indicators during March and April 2020. However, in an international context, German networks are performing, in general, better than those of some other European countries with stricter lockdown rules and greater traffic volume increases.

• The United Kingdom: the British fixed networks handled the traffic increase well, and Internet service quality was reasonably stable, but Customer Experience was somewhat affected, especially when connected via Wi-Fi, on several days starting March.

• Spain: Like other countries worldwide, and being one of the best prepared thanks to its large deployment of fiber optics, the performance of services in Spanish homes were affected due to the large increase in traffic, despite the fact that Internet service is stable in general terms. Above all, degradation was seen in basic parameters such as compliance with the contracted speed, latency or packet loss.

The telecommunications sector has played a fundamental role in mitigating the effects of the Internet traffic increase and network congestion by taking reactive and proactive measures to maintain service quality and Customer Experience while supporting the society. During these uncharted times, there have been differences in the impact of the lockdown on network performance across the different Telecom Operators. 

At MedUX, we are always working hard to improve network performance, monitor Customer Experience and deliver innovative solutions to support the telecommunications industry. We have made ourselves available to all European operators as well as government agencies to support them and do our bit to improve communications, critical to the functioning of society and the economy during these difficult times and this new era. 

If you find yourself interested, we would love to talk about how we can support your Customer Experience and customer satisfaction strategy! Contact us at hello@medux.com and request our demo to find out how you can gain end-to-end network visibility and real-time insights and performance statistics, to anticipate and address network issues.