Polish regulator UKE has published a report on the implementation of the EU open internet regulation, monitoring the quality of internet access service (IAS) provided by internet service providers (ISPs) in Poland in the period from 1 May 2018 to 30 April 2019. UKE concludes that Polish ISPs comply with the open internet regulation. The data also confirm the continuing trend of increasing internet speeds.
In line with the requirements of the EU open internet regulation 2015/2120, national regulators monitor compliance of local ISPs with the obligations, such transparency of contract terms related to IAS quality, speed limits, as well as traffic management and special services, such as VoIP, IPTV, data transmission, VPN, VoLTE, APN, NB-IoT and VPBX.
In the report UKE concludes that ISPs comply with the transparency obligations and provide subscribers with information on general terms and price lists on their web pages. ISPs providing services on mobile networks explain how data consumption is affected using various types of content, applications and services and indicate subscribers reaching a certain data limit. Most ISPs consider the most important IAS quality parameters, beside speed, also latency, jitter and packet loss.
UKE was investigating one case of a traffic management practice which UKE found non-compliant with the network neutrality rules. Administrative proceedings were led against the operators Vectra and P4 (Play), who were blocking access to the gambling web site www.bet-at-home.com. That was before the Act on gambling entered in force in Poland on 19 November 2009. The regulator closed the proceeding without imposing a fine on any of the providers, reasoning with the insignificance of the violation.
Since 1 December 2018, UKE has been offering consumers a free certified mechanism for IAS quality measurements by the company V-Speed. UKE used V-Speed’s aggregated data also for a comparative analysis of the download and upload speeds and ping. On 18 June 2019, UKE also published a report on the usage of the certified mechanism for monitoring of the internet access quality.
V-Speed is available both in a web browser (speedtest.pl) and as a mobile application (Internet Speed Test). In the web browser, the users of both fixed and mobile internet had made 1.7 million tests until April 2018, and 2 million tests until April 2019. In the mobile app, users had conducted around 250,000 tests until April 2018 and 530,000 until April 2019.
UKE presents the trends in download speed, upload speed and ping over the period of the past 4 years.
In the web browser, the average download speed increased to 43.78 Mbps in April 2019 (from 19.88 Mbps in April 2016) and the average upload speed increased to 18.09 Mbps (from 6.57 Mbps); and ping. Ping has been oscillating around 37 milliseconds since 2016.
In mobile application, the average download speed increased to 21.06 Mbps in April 2019 (from 13.51 Mbps in April 2016) and upload speed increased to 7.79 Mbps (from 3.98 Mbps). Ping is 46 milliseconds, down from 69 milliseconds in April 2016.
The most significant speed increases were in the ranges 30-100 Mbps and more than 100 Mbps. This was the effect of the development of the fibre-optics and LTE networks.
Internet users in Poland who want to test their internet connection using also another tool, different from the one recommended by the regulator UKE, can try our free Open Nettest, available both as a web interface and as a mobile application. With servers located outside the networks of ISPs, as a rule in national IP exchange points, it provides an objective tool for the measurement of the user’s experience with the internet service.