Best network: Quickline puts Swisscom, Sunrise and Salt off the podium

Who offers the best offer for web TV, streaming and home office? The German company Connect asked itself this question and looked at the various broadband providers in Switzerland. The result was surprising: the test winner was Quickline, an association of regional partners with a mix of cable and fiber connections. According to the Connect survey, Sunrise, Swisscom and Salt only rank in second, third and fourth place.

But what is Quickline that has managed to knock the big names off the podium? It is a merger of 24 independent and regionally anchored partners that form the Quickline network and have their headquarters in Nidau ​​BE. They offer cable and fiber optic connections for TV, Internet and mobile devices. With these, Quickline won in several categories, according to Connect. Quickline provides broadband Internet to around 400,000 Swiss households.

Quickline provides an extremely good website, the report reads. The performance on web TV is also exceptional. Another positive factor is that fixed telephony is automatically included in the connections. Quickline’s high-speed internet is a little less exceptional. There the supplier only came in second place. The verdict of the test company Connect is: very good.

Sunrise ranks second among suppliers. For its fixed network offering, this company relies heavily on fiber optics and always includes fixed network telephony in its offerings, albeit at different call rates. The “We TV” TV service is available at an additional cost. Sunrise has done better in terms of web services. When checking the upload speed of a photo book via the Sunrise network, the Connect testers are extremely satisfied. This contrasts with the second slowest response to game servers measured.

However, it should be remembered that Sunrise introduced a new data package called “We Home XL +” after the start of the Connect measurements. Due to its later introduction, this cannot be included in the survey, which is why the results cannot provide any information about this offer. The final verdict of Connect on Sunrise is: very good.

Swisscom was ranked third in the Connect survey. According to the report, the supplier can be ranked in the good medium range. Three fiber-optic connections and one DSL were tested at Swisscom. As Connect reports, the download bandwidth at Swisscom has dropped in an impressive number of cases below the limit of 90 percent of the contractually agreed value.

This was especially evident in the 1 Gbit / s fiber optic connection. Good results, however, were the tests on web services and on web TV, which were still the second worst of the test. Optionally, “Swisscom TV” and telephony can be combined. The verdict of the testers: good.

Salt and UPC finished fourth and fifth. At Salt, all measurements fell below the contractually agreed 90 percent bandwidth limit during testing. Even under optimal conditions, the connectors could only achieve a usable data rate of 8 Gbit / s and not the promised 10 Gbit / s. The salt only points this out in a hidden way. However, the performance in web services and web TV ranks second best in the test comparison. The tester’s verdict is therefore: good.

It looks different in UPC. The company has not yet offered any FTTH (“fiber for the home”) technology.) to. It is therefore not surprising that in many cases data upload and download speeds drop below 90%. UPC also performed well in web services, but still came in last. Performance in the web TV area is very good, but the long buffer times are noticeable in the higher bandwidth class. This can also be seen in slow game pings and photo book uploads. So the verdict is: satisfactory.

This is the first time that the test company Connect has performed such a measurement in Switzerland. 14 Swiss cities served as test sites for this. In the period from September 14 to October 11, a total of 803,297 measurements were made. In conclusion, the company says that all Swiss networks can easily handle the higher loads from home office, homeschooling and video streaming.

As with previous Connect tests in Germany and Austria, the focus has been on services in the areas of high-speed Internet, web services and web TV. Interestingly, “the broadband offers available in Switzerland rely more heavily on fast fiber optic lines than in Austria – and a considerable distance ahead of Germany.” However, this did not bring any significant advantages in the measurements.