To assess the health of the national networks, the new report “Barometer of Mobile Internet Connections in Italy“, published in January 2026 by the French company nPerf.
The study, based on hundreds of thousands of tests carried out directly by users between January 1 and December 31, 2025, has declared a clear winner.
Vodafone cements itself as the operator with the best overall performance, consolidating a network that appears robust on almost all technical fronts analyzed.
Vodafone’s technical domain: speed and responsiveness
The analysis of the data collected during 2025 shows how Vodafone has outpaced the competition, accumulating an overall score of 90.088 nPoints, the proprietary metric that summarizes the quality of the user experience. This victory is not the result of a single parameter, but of a cross-cutting lead across the key performance indicators.
In particular, the red operator has shown its muscles on pure speed, reaching an average download of 121.50 Mbps. This bandwidth not only facilitates high-definition streaming content, but makes downloading large files extremely fast, placing the operator in a clear advantage over competitors.
But download speed is not the only ace up Vodafone’s sleeve. The operator also excels in the upload, with an average of 17.49 Mbps, a crucial factor for those who work on the move and need to conduct stable videoconferences or share heavy content on cloud and social networks.
Moreover, a particularly meaningful data point for online gaming enthusiasts and real-time applications is the latency: with an average value of only 37.77 ms, Vodafone guarantees the most responsive network in the country, minimizing delays in transmitting data packets.
Also in terms of daily usage experience, such as web browsing and the YouTube video streaming, the operator maintains the top rung on the podium, although in these specific areas it shares leadership jointly with WindTre, offering success rates of 71.98% and 78.19%, respectively.
The race for the best 5G
If you narrow the focus to the 5G technology alone, the technical gap appears even more pronounced. According to the nPerf Barometer, Vodafone subscribers enjoyed the best 5G experience in Italy throughout 2025.
The operator has racked up recognitions in this specific category, taking the top spot for the best download speed (211.19 Mbps in 5G), the best upload speed, and the lowest latency on 5G networks.
Also within the realm of video streaming on 5G, Vodafone stood out as the best, ensuring smoother playback. The only area where the lead was shared is web navigation on 5G, where WindTre managed to match the market leader’s performance.
These data confirm how infrastructure investments in the new network are delivering tangible results, offering performance well above previous generations.
The competition: how WindTre, Fastweb, TIM, and Iliad fared?
Despite Vodafone’s lead, the Italian telecom sector shows a lively competition, with a national average score of 81,327 nPoints that testifies to a generally high quality of the infrastructure.
In second place in the overall ranking is WindTre, with 84,814 nPoints. The operator proves to be a fierce competitor especially in perceived user experience, sharing the lead for the quality of navigation and the quality of video streaming.
Fastweb (which is no longer a Vodafone competitor) claims the third rung of the podium with a score of 82,620 nPoints, marking a 0.8% year-over-year increase.
The Fastweb strategy seems to heavily focus on pure speed: the operator stands out for an average download speed of 104.20 Mbps and an upload of 15.35 Mbps, values that earn it the second place in these metrics, just behind the leader. Fastweb’s average latency sits at 46.70 ms, still delivering good responsiveness for most applications.
TIM places fourth with 80,690 nPoints, but earns an honorable mention for latency: at 44.70 ms, it offers the second-best responsiveness in the sector, a factor that makes it a solid choice for real-time applications.
Rounding out the standings is Iliad with 68,424 nPoints; while remaining distant from the leaders in terms of pure performance, the operator maintains a steady and solid presence in the Italian mobile market.
How was quality measured?
The value added by the nPerf report lies in its data collection methodology, based entirely on crowdsourcing. Unlike lab tests, the results come from the real experience of end users. The nPerf app, available for free on Android and iOS, allows anyone to test their own connection.
The final score, expressed in nPoints, is an aggregated index that takes into account all measurements made during a complete test: download speed (the amount of data received in a second), upload speed, latency (the server response time), browsing performance (loading times of the 5 most popular sites) and video streaming performance (smoothness of playback on YouTube at various resolutions).
To ensure the score faithfully reflects human perception, the speed and latency values are calculated on a logarithmic scale, which penalizes poor performance more than it rewards exceptionally high ones, thus offering a realistic view of the daily quality of the Italian connection.
