Key takeaways
- Top performers: Switzerland and Sweden consistently ranked highest for both connection rate and audio quality, reflecting mature infrastructure and strong network management.
- Regional disparities: Developing economies showed lower performance metrics, likely due to infrastructure pressures from rapid growth.
- Stability matters: Consistent performance (like Australia’s connection rates) is often more valuable than peak performance with high variability.
- Infrastructure upgrades work: Countries like Italy and Singapore demonstrated measurable improvements following network upgrades.
- Monitor proactively: Organizations should continuously test their telecom infrastructure across all operating regions to identify and resolve issues before they affect customers.
Executive Summary: Analysis of Cyara’s anonymized testing data from April 2022 to mid-May 2023 reveals significant variations in telecom performance across countries. Switzerland and Sweden emerged as top performers for both connection rate and audio quality, while countries like Cameroon and Pakistan showed the lowest connection rates, and China and Pakistan recorded the lowest audio quality scores. These findings underscore the importance of proactive telecom monitoring for organizations operating globally.
To proactively and accurately monitor your telecoms infrastructure around the globe, Cyara has invested in ensuring it has the most comprehensive and reliable global infrastructure. We are proud to provide coverage in over 145 countries and support more than 420fixed-line carriers.
Our global infrastructure
Cyara’s vast coverage allows you to test locations and carriers that are relevant to your organization and its individual needs. The resultant insights allow you to better understand exactly what your customers experience when contacting your numbers and any issues they may be facing. By proactively monitoring your numbers, you save time and money and prevent potential losses in sales or reputational damage caused by outages or poor quality. Additionally, you benefit from testing by ensuring you provide your customers with an enhanced customer experience (CX).
Our customers frequently tell us that they previously relied heavily on their callers to report any issues. This often took a long time and many problems went unreported, leaving these organizations in the dark. This reactive approach has negative consequences for customer loyalty, revenue and reputation. This is why we firmly believe and encourage organizations like yours to take a proactive approach to continuous voice testing.
Following a recent review of our anonymized testing data between April 2022 and mid-May 2023, we made a number of interesting observations.
Connection rates
What Determines Connection Rate Performance
Connection rate refers to the percentage of calls that successfully connect to their intended destination without encountering network failures, busy signals, or other technical barriers preventing completion.
While residential phone calls can encounter a “busy tone” when a number is dialed, business lines are configured to accept multiple calls simultaneously. Capacity management is required at the destination end of the call, but many network factors may prevent these calls from successful completion. Today’s callers expect to place a call at any time and be connected with your organization, without issue.
The top performing countries in terms of their connection rates during this period were:
Top 5 countries for connection rate:
- Iceland – 99.65% average
- Switzerland – 99.64% average
- Sweden – 99.59% average
- Australia – 99.56% average
- Netherlands – 99.52% average
While Iceland achieved the highest average connection rate at 99.65%, it also shows variability, with a recorded connection minimum of 87.39% during this period. For most organizations, network stability is a highly-valued feature and should not be underestimated. Less variation, as seen in Australia, is preferred due to its consistency and reliability.
In general, connection rate success is expected to be 100%, with callers anticipating getting through to your organization whenever they choose to make contact. However, a number of the countries we examined did not achieve this. The worst performing countries for connection rates are highlighted in the table below:
5 countries with the lowest connection rate:
- Cameroon – 91.23% average
- Pakistan – 92.45% average
- Nigeria – 93.12% average
- Estonia – 94.67% average
- Kenya – 95.34% average
Audio quality
Factors Affecting Audio Quality Scores
When your audio quality is performing well, the environment is suitable for a conversation. But, when your audio quality is poor, it quickly becomes a source of distraction and annoyance for both callers and agents. Research also shows that as your audio quality diminishes, so too does your credibility. This is because reduced quality requires an intensified effort by your listeners and has even been found to affect callers’ emotional states.
Too often, audio quality gets reduced due to network capacity issues which result in audio compression. Technical problems during network transit can also result in packet loss or other issues that degrade the audio quality.
Cyara utilizes Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) for global in-country number testing. PESQ is an objective, industry-standard measurement for audio quality that provides a score from -0.5 to 4.5, where scores above 3.5 indicate good audio quality suitable for clear conversation. PESQ takes into consideration characteristics such as:
- Call volume
- Audio sharpness
- Background noise
- Audio interference
- Variable latency or lags in audio
- Clipping
The top performing countries for audio quality during the period examined were:
Top 5 countries for audio quality (PESQ score):
- Switzerland – 3.92 average
- Sweden – 3.89 average
- Estonia – 3.87 average
- Singapore – 3.86 average
- Australia – 3.84 average
And the countries with the lowest average audio quality were as follows:
5 countries with the lowest audio quality (PESQ score):
- China – 3.21 average
- Pakistan – 3.28 average
- Nigeria – 3.35 average
- Cameroon – 3.41 average
- Kenya – 3.48 average
The key results
Regional telecom infrastructure trends
Based on our analysis, Switzerland and Sweden stand out as top performers for both connection rate and audio quality. Each is a mature economy that has strong network management processes, they also invest heavily to support their network development, change management and capacity augmentation. All of these help to maintain their high levels of quality and stability.
It’s interesting to note that Estonia, which ranked poorly in terms of connection rate, ranked very strongly for audio quality. It’s plausible that their recent robust economic development may have put their communications infrastructure under increased pressure.
We also saw that Italy experienced a positive change in their audio quality from mid-July 2022, this is suggestive of network upgrades being completed during this period. Previously, the average PESQ score was 3.5, while the subsequent average was significantly more consistent at around 3.84.
During the first 90 days of our dataset, we observed that Singapore experienced an average PESQ score of 3.69. In the latter 90 days, this improved to 3.86, which demonstrates slow, but steady improvements. Additionally, China has seen ongoing variation that may be associated with the pressures of rapidly increasing service demand. With this expanding demand for services, China’s networks may struggle to add capacity at the “correct” time, and may compress some audio to preserve their capacity.
Conclusion
Reduced connection rates could mean that your customers are unable to connect with you. Research by Aircall shows that approximately 85% of these callers will not attempt to call back. Instead they’ll likely turn to your competitor or abandon the purchase altogether. Poor audio quality performance means that your callers and agents will have to more actively listen to participate and follow a conversation. Worse still it may cause your callers to become frustrated and simply hang up as the quality is too poor to allow for a meaningful conversation, leading to negative reputational damage for your brand and potential revenue loss.
To provide your customers with the best service and CX, it’s essential that you test your infrastructure, so you will be alerted to issues and are capable of resolving these promptly before they impact your callers. With Cyara Voice Assure, you have the flexibility and power to accurately replicate your CX from anywhere in the world and experience the call path exactly as your customers do.
Frequently Asked Questions
Cyara evaluates two primary metrics: connection rates, which measure whether a call successfully reaches its destination, and audio quality, which is scored using the PESQ (Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality) standard on a scale of -0.5 to 4.5.
PESQ is an objective, industry-recognized standard for measuring audio quality that accounts for factors like call volume, background noise, audio sharpness, clipping, and variable latency. Cyara uses it to provide consistent, comparable audio quality scores across all countries tested.
Switzerland and Sweden stood out as top performers across both metrics, supported by mature economies, strong network management processes, and ongoing investment in network development and capacity.
A country’s performance can vary between connection rate and audio quality depending on its infrastructure pressures. Estonia, for example, ranked poorly for connection rate but performed strongly for audio quality, likely due to rapid economic growth placing strain on its communications infrastructure.
Poor connection rates mean customers may not be able to reach you at all, and research shows approximately 85% of callers who cannot connect will not attempt to call back. Low audio quality can frustrate callers and cause them to hang up, leading to reputational damage and potential revenue loss.
Audio quality commonly degrades due to network capacity issues that trigger audio compression, as well as technical problems during network transit such as packet loss, variable latency, or other interference.
