Opensignal report: Celcom has best 4G availability, but Maxis is the king of speed

We recently spoke to Opensignal CEO, Brendan Gill, about what makes a good mobile internet connection. And the gist of it is: it’s not as simple as pure download speeds (especially when it comes to “video experience”), with a lot of other factors coming into play—latency, consistency of the connection, and so on. Opensignal has just published its new report on the mobile network experience in Malaysia, with a timeframe from the beginning of June till the end of August 2019.

Here are the key national findings: Celcom has the best 4G availability and latency scores, while Maxis has the best download (17.7Mbps) and upload (6.6Mbps) scores. Opensignal also has a new metric for this report, with the inaugural “Voice App Experience” award going to Unifi. And rather interestingly, Opensignal reports that U Mobile has improved the experience of its users by some way—a 30% improved video experience, 75% improved download speeds, and double the upload speeds (from the previous report).

Perhaps most pertinently for the large number of Malaysians who use their mobile devices for online media consumption, Celcom is rated as the provider that provides the best “Video Experience”. Based on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)’s approach for measuring video quality, 3 main criteria are taken into account: the load time before the video begins playing, stops/stutters during playback, and the resolution of the video.

But it’s not the same across different states in Malaysia

The report also analyses the different experiences across Malaysia, with certain providers performing better than others in different states. Celcom and Maxis may have won most of the awards for the national findings, but when it comes to a state-by-state assessment, things are a little different. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Johor

Kedah

Kelantan

Kuala Lumpur

Melaka

Negeri Sembilan

Pahang

Perak

Pulau Pinang

Putrajaya

Sabah

Sarawak

Selangor

Terengganu

Yes 4G has the best 4G availability in 11 out of the 14 regions, with scores of 90% and above for all 14 regions tested. For the remaining 3 regions, Celcom and Maxis shared the award, while Celcom, Maxis, and Unifi split the award for Sabah.

Meanwhile, download speeds for Maxis users peaked in Pahang at 21.1Mbps, while Celcom users achieved a high of 20.5Mbps in Kuala Lumpur. As for latency, users in Kuala Lumpur reported the best results—with a ping time of <40ms on 5 out of 6 networks (with the exception being U Mobile/Celcom having the best latency reading in KL).

Users in Kuala Lumpur reported the best “Video Experience” on Celcom’s network, while scores for Maxis and Celcom ranged from “Very Good” to “Good”. Yes and Digi scored “Good” to “Fair” ratings—the losers in this category are U Mobile and Unifi, who attained scores of “Fair” to “Poor” ratings.

But in Opensignal’s new “Voice App Experience” category, Malaysian providers fared comparatively poorly. None of the operators attained ratings of “Good” or above in any of the regions, with the best experience coming from Maxis users in Putrajaya.

If you’d like to read the report in more detail, click here. To better understand the methodology behind Opensignal’s reports, you can watch our interview with CEO Brendan Gill below:

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