Which thresholds apply to the traffic lights?

The threshold values for the evaluation are shown regardless of your Internet access (regardless whether testing is carried out with a WLAN, a browser, 2G/EDGE, 3G/UMTS/HSPA, 4G/LTE or 5G/NR smart phone). The colours give a general indication whether the quality is sufficient for the majority of applications on the Internet.

There is no generally accepted definition of “sufficient” bandwidth; the subjective perception of the necessary speed depends on the type of application used.

The red/orange/green scale is irrespective of the technology in question and refers to the measured data rate solely. However, very high data rates can only be achieved by certain technologies such as LTE or NR. Therefore a red result is not necessarily a bad result if the region you are testing provides only a 2G-connection. With some technologies it is not possible to achieve a green-light result (e.g. with EDGE or ISDN Internet access).

RTR’s experts selected the following threshold values:

Data rate

Ping (Latency)

• dark green up to 10 ms, green up to 25 ms, yellow up to 75 ms, red above

Signal

• Mobile, EDGE and UMTS: dark green from -75 dBm, green from -85 dBm, yellow from  -101 dBm, red below
• Mobile, LTE: dark green from -85 dBm, green from -95 dBm, yellow from -111 dBm, red below
• Mobile, NR: currently no definition of thresholds
• WLAN: dark green from -51 dBm, green from -61 dBm, yellow from -76 dBm, red below

Note: The dark green color identifies very fast or good connections.