Celcom awarded Malaysia’s best telco for mobile coverage in 2021 by Ookla Speedtest

Celcom has announced that it has been recognised by Ookla Speedtest Awards for having the Best Mobile Coverage in Malaysia for 2021. The award ceremony was held at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022 in Barcelona last week.

According to Celcom, analysis of Ookla’s Speedtest report for Q3-Q4 2021 showed that it has garnered a coverage score of 787 in Malaysia which is the highest in Malaysia. As a comparison, Digi has recorded a coverage score of 639, followed by Maxis at 627, U Mobile at 474, and Unifi Mobile at 363. Celcom also claims to have recorded the highest scan count of more than 142 million scans and covered 356,606 locations from the total locations observed nationwide. The report states that Celcom has achieved and led with a winning score of 93.2% for 4G coverage and 99.7% for general coverage nationwide.

Celcom added that the award is a recognition of the impact of their RM825 million investment for network improvements in 2021. They have added 900 LTE sites, while over 9,500 sites were optimised with improved 4G coverage and capacity across the nation. The blue telco claims to achieve an estimated 99% 4G LTE population coverage in 7 states, while increasing 4G LTE population coverage, especially in Sabah, Pahang, Terengganu, Kelantan, Sarawak, Negeri Sembilan, and Kedah.

By the end of 2021, Celcom claims to achieve 94.5% LTE population coverage nationwide, which is measured with a signal strength of -98dBm in urban and sub-urban areas to provide an average of 3-4 bars outdoor signal on the mobile device. In terms of LTE Advanced (LTE-A), they currently have a population coverage of 90% which provides a better experience for video streaming, gaming and higher download speeds nationwide.

Commenting on the recognition, Celcom CEO Datuk Idham Nawawi said Celcom is proud to be acknowledged as Malaysia’s Best Mobile Coverage by Ookla. He added, “We will continue to invest in modernising our network and address the rapid data traffic growth and demand with accelerated network investments. The investments include deploying the latest end-to-end network technology such as the world’s first large-scale commercial FDD Smart 8T8R, 4T4R multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), Carrier Aggregation, 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and many more, improving digital experiences.”

Idham also said “We will also ensure that we continue to invest and make our network services available to all societies, including the most remote areas in Sabah and Sarawak. We want to strengthen the trust of our customers as well as other stakeholders, by staying focused to improve digital connectivity and experiences for Malaysians from all walks of life, driving digital inclusion nationwide.”

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