The CMT, the Spanish telecom regulations authority, counted 6.7 million broadband internet subscriptions in Spain at the end of last year, and the figure is constantly rising. Internet service providers are therefore confronted with an increasingly large and ever more demanding clientele which makes no bones about switching ISPs because of disappointing performance or to gain access to a wider selection of services. 

The CMT, the Spanish telecom regulations authority, counted 6.7 million broadband internet subscriptions in Spain at the end of last year, and the figure is constantly rising. Internet service providers are therefore confronted with an increasingly large and ever more demanding clientele which makes no bones about switching ISPs because of disappointing performance or to gain access to a wider selection of services.

Internet access has indeed opened up new horizons for the user. It is not just about surfing a few staid sites or e-mailing. Usage has evolved with the increase in bandwidth. And so have websites. Subscriptions must offer quick, smooth navigation, so that people can exchange e-mails enriched with high-definition photos, play online as easily as on a home console, and download large files speedily.
Service providers went beyond improving the capabilities of their internet access solutions. They innovated by launching related services that are useful and very economical for users, without requiring any specific “heavy” installation.  This is why it is now possible to call a multitude of places around the world cheaply, or even free of charge, or get an eyeful of a wealth of television channels without worrying about the quality of reception of hertz carrier waves that are so dependent on surroundings, the weather, neighboring buildings, construction equipment, TV breakdowns or weak broadcasting, and so forth. The viewer goes from a few channels to hundreds simply by connecting the television to the internet devices on offer.
But do these solutions really work? Is the telephone quality the same as on a traditional phone network? Are calls processed correctly? Are the images transmitted on the television screen as visually pleasing? Is there any problem with pixelization? And are there any glitches when changing channels?

If users encounter such inconveniences, they are unable to know whether the service would be better if they changed service providers; they also cannot guess what other problems they might encounter there.

In an effort to answer these questions, ip-label.newtest deployed robots which measure the performance of triple-play services as an internet user would perceive them. The aim is not to offer a snapshot of internet quality in all broadband households, but to track trends in order to give the closest representation of performance. To do so, subscriptions similar to those that an individual would subscribe to were taken out with each of the internet service providers rated in this first comparative panel (Jazztel, Orange, Superbanda, Telefonica, Ya.com).

To be able to differentiate the performance observed for each ISP, the subscriptions were installed on telephone lines built in a strictly identical environment in Madrid (lines created at the same time, at the same distance from the DSLAM, same quality copper, same rate of attenuation, and so forth). In this way the performances recorded on identical test campaigns, on equivalent computers and environments, were really comparable.

For internet access, a combination of availability, loading performance of web pages (without cache) and usage performance (FTP, e-mail, etc.) yielded the rating for technical quality. For telephone service, the rate of successful call connection and continuity, as well as speech quality, were the deciding factors.
For television, the indicators took into account the rate of successful channel changes and channel-surfing throughput.

The result was a clear, detailed study, commented and supplemented with simple yet complete graphics for immediate comprehensibility. This contributed to a not inappreciable clarification of the real performances of triple-play offers within a benchmark approach.