An independent report has found Maxis to be the leading network provider for mobile internet for the second year running. OpenSignal’s State of Mobile Networks report found Maxis to provide the best overall mobile Internet network, but a surprising new entry has managed to wiggle its way into second place.
OpenSignal’s report measures each telco’s performance in a series of metrics, including 4G and 3G download speeds as well as availability. It also takes into account latency, which is also a big factor in the overall network experience.
Maxis was the top performer in all but two metrics. It was the best telco in 3G and 4G Download Speeds, as well as in 3G and 4G Latency. This is an improvement from last year’s report, where it was top in only two metrics, while drawing in three others.
It is also worth mentioning that in the two performance metrics that it wasn’t at the top, Maxis placed a solid second place. Maxis is known to invest more money than other telcos in expanding and upgrading its network, and it appears to have borne fruit.
These results are also impressive considering the fact that this year’s report adds two new telcos in the country: webe and Yes 4G. While webe was not outstanding in any field, Yes 4G was a surprising performer, placing top in both 4G Download Speed and Overall Download Speed.
As a pure 4G player, Yes 4G’s network certainly hits the right notes in the OpenSignal report. The report also states that by focusing on a 4G-only network, Yes 4G can focus its resources better than Maxis, which also maintains a 3G network. And, because of its 4G-only approach, it performed exceptionally in the Overall Download Speed metric, since 3G networks are generally slower, which brings down the average speeds on the other networks.
However, it should be noted that the 4G Availability metric is based on “the proportion of time OpenSignal users have an LTE connection available” on the network. Hence, it isn’t a measure of how wide the network is, but rather how stable the 4G network is. With this in mind, it only makes sense that Yes 4G, a pure 4G network operator, excels in this metric.
On top of that, the OpenSignal report also revealed how the other network operators in Malaysia is lagging behind. For example, while Maxis had an average 4G download speed of 23.6Mbps, Digi, U Mobile, and webe both had average speeds below the global average of 16.2Mbps; U Mobile and webe’s 4G networks only averaged around 7Mbps.
This year’s report was based on a sample size of 1.07 billion measurements collected from over 75,000 test devices used by OpenSignal app users between 1 June until 31 August 2017. This report is far larger than last year’s, which had a sample size of only 40 million measurements from over 21,000 app users.
Overall, the report clearly shows that Maxis is pulling away from the other telcos as a mobile internet provider. This is a huge difference from last year’s report, where it was a closer fight between the Big Four telcos. Yes 4G’s performance is admirable too, but webe’s real-world 4G availability looks rather disappointing considering the 850MHz spectrum has greater reach over the 2600MHz spectrum most telcos in Malaysia use.
The full OpenSignal report can be found here.
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