E.Razumny for Vedomosti

A week earlier, the 4GSpeed service published data from 130,000 measurements, according to which the best speed indicators were demonstrated by Megafon. Last year, 600,000 measurements made by Ookla (owner of the SpeedTest service) showed that the fastest operator in Moscow was MTS . And in August 2013, the Telecom Daily agency examined the speed of 4G networks in Moscow - and Megafon was the leader.

The Mobile Speed Rating (MSR) agency has published its own study of mobile internet speed in Moscow - VimpelCom became the leader in average data download speed in the LTE standard. The representatives of the "big three" interviewed by Vedomosti had never heard of MSR before.

VimpelCom CEO Mikhail Slobodin was skeptical about the MSR results: "The methodology is unclear, the speeds are unreal. <...> Although we are first in this test, it does not look very professional." He also criticized the 4GSpeed methodology: "They did some crazy stuff - they measured the 4G speed at night and on the street. In general, so far everything I see is not very professional, and sometimes even stupid. Although sometimes it is nice."

A Megafon representative disagrees with MSR's findings: the combined network of Megafon and Yota is currently the best in terms of speed and coverage area in 4G and 3G in Moscow, and its leadership is confirmed by research from Telecom Daily and 4GSpeed.

No methodology of research that is created primarily for the purpose of publishing the results can stand up to criticism, they are completely dependent on customers, says MTS representative Dmitry Solodovnikov: the only purpose of measurements is to manipulate public opinion, they do not provide real information about the speed of mobile Internet. Solodovnikov is confident that subscribers themselves are able to assess the quality of communication, and advises focusing on customer churn, which MTS has the lowest - 9% in the fourth quarter of 2013.

MSR CEO Igor Nefedov assures that the study was not commissioned, was conducted at the agency’s own expense and is more objective than 4GSpeed’s: 4GSpeed only conducted measurements at night, while MSR conducted them during the day, evening and night.

4GSpeed CEO Alexey Rezvanov called MSR's research an attempt to copy the success of his project and noted that the average 4G speeds in Moscow published by MSR (25-32 Mbps) make them the fastest networks in the world, which is hard to believe. Rezvanov cites OpenSignal data that Claro Brazil became the fastest network in the world with an average speed of 27.8 Mbps. Defending the 4GSpeed methodology, Rezvanov insists that the results of measurements on unloaded cellular networks are the most objective: during peak hours, the random factor is high - the speed will depend on the number of users in a given cell.

The results of the research may be correct at the moment of the measurements, but in an hour the situation may turn 180 degrees, says Dmitry Ryzhkov, development director of the developer of mobile services for the public sector, Altarix: for example, the concentration of subscribers of one of the operators at the measurement point or the subscribers of one operator consume traffic more actively than the subscribers of another.

The figures of both MSR and 4GSpeed are far from the truth, they are done by non-professionals, and the testing methods are homemade, complains Denis Kuskov, CEO of Telecom Daily: the researchers do not even publish the calculation methodology and technical research logs. So anyone can conduct a study and declare the operator that is favorable to them the winner, and the initiators of the tests can be the operators themselves, Kuskov concludes.

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