Opensignal ranked Rakuten Mobile top in 5G data rates in Japan, putting pressure on competitors as the operator narrows the gap in other categories.

In analysis conducted between 1 April and 29 June, Rakuten Mobile clocked a 5G downlink rate of 177.6Mb/s and uplink of 30.8Mb/s, compared with an average of 141.3Mb/s and 14.3Mb/s for its rivals NTT Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank Corp.

Opensignal ranked Rakuten Mobile top for typical 4G upload rates on 19.4Mb/s compared with an average of 7.7Mb/s for the other three

The research outfit suggested Rakuten Mobile’s average 4G download rate is closing in on the others, as on-net traffic increases. The figure grew by more than 10 percentage points in the two years since the operator launched services, hitting 37.6Mb/s at end-June.

Over the same period, the typical rate of Rakuten Mobile’s rivals fell from 46.4Mb/s to 40.5Mb/s.

Opensignal found the percentage of LTE traffic on Rakuten Mobile’s own network grew from 55.7 per cent in Q1 2021 to 94.1 per cent in Q2.

It did not update 5G availability data published in a report covering the period from 1 December 2022 to end-February, which placed Rakuten Mobile last and roaming host KDDI top.

Rakuten Mobile closed Q1 with 98.4 per cent population coverage, with 57,400 LTE sites.

Opensignal stated the percentage of time Rakuten Mobile users spent without a mobile signal fell from 1.7 per cent in Q2 2022 to 0.9 per cent in Q1.

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