Large scale subjective signal quality measurements for a mobile radio communications system are made using a large number of handheld subscriber radio communication units moving at various positions in the mobile radio communications system. Each handheld subscriber unit stores a copy of a test voice or video signal stream as does a quality management network node. An uplink subjective signal quality for each such handheld subscriber unit is determined based on a comparison of the stored test signal and the received test signal from the handheld subscriber unit. A downlink subjective signal quality to each handheld unit is based on the returned test signal stream received from the handheld subscriber unit and the stored test signal stream. Because the handheld units do not perform the subjective quality comparison calculations, ordinary subscriber units that do not require significant extra data processing resources associated with those calculations may be used.