In Tutela’s 2021 South East Asia State of Mobile Experience report, which compares user mobile experiences in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam, all six countries demonstrated great results, with Singapore dominating in a majority of the metrics tested. Notably, despite Singapore’s compelling lead, Vietnam often vied for a highly-competitive second-place.
At a country-level, Singapore won in all metrics tested, with the most important win being the highest Excellent Consistent Quality in South East Asia, with 84.5% of connections having a network experience suitable for use-cases like 1080p video streaming, real-time mobile gaming and HD video calling. Singapore also had the highest Core Consistent Quality in the region at 94.4%.
Consistent Quality is a set of metrics that Tutela has developed to objectively evaluate when connections are (or are not) enabling users to do the things they want to on their mobile devices. There are two sets of thresholds, Excellent and Core. A connection that hits the Excellent threshold is sufficient for use-cases like 1080p video streaming, HD video calling and multiplayer gaming, while a Core connection should be sufficient to stream standard-definition video or handle day-to-day activities like web browsing or uploading photos to social media. The percentages seen in this report represent the percentage of tests for subscribers on a given operator that were above the Excellent or Core thresholds.
Singapore also had the fastest download speed at 26.2 Mbps, the fastest upload speed at 14.7 Mbps, and the most responsive network with a latency result of 9.0 ms. However, Vietnam was always very close behind, with second-place winnings for both Excellent Consistent Quality (72.3%) and Core Consistent Quality (86.1%).
The report was released by Tutela Technologies, a global crowdsourced mobile data company, and evaluated over 55 million speed and latency tests, conducted on the smartphones of real-world users of national mobile operators within Common Coverage Areas, between August 1st and January 31st, 2021.
Per country findings were as follows:
Singapore:
- By operator in Singapore, StarHub dominated in four of the seven metrics tested, including the highest Excellent Consistent Quality with 87.3% of users having a network experience suitable for 1080p video streaming or HD group video calling.
- StarHub also had the highest Core Consistent Quality, Tutela’s measure of whether a connection is good enough for everyday uses, like email, social media, and SD video streaming, the fastest download speeds, and the most responsive network in the country.
Indonesia:
- Telkomsel won six out of the seven metrics tested, with Indosat Ooredoo being the only other operator to make it onto the leaderboard in Indonesia with the fastest median upload speed.
- Telkomsel was in first place for Excellent Consistent Quality with 65.0%, and also in first for Core Consistent Quality with 83.5%. However, there was only a 3% difference between the operator and second-place Indosat Ooredoo.
Malaysia:
- In Malaysia, the leaderboard was shared by at least four operators, with U Mobile offering its users the best mobile experience in the country. The operator won highest Excellent and Core Consistent Quality, and fastest upload speed.
- Digi had the fastest median download speed in Common Coverage Areas across Malaysia with 10.6 Mbps but came third in the upload speed test with 6.2 Mbps. Maxis had the most responsive network in the country, while Celcom had both the best 5G/4G coverage and total coverage.
Thailand:
- By operator in Thailand, AIS won in four of the seven categories tested, including the highest Excellent Consistent Quality and most responsive network. However, TrueMove was also on the leaderboard in three of the seven categories including highest Core Consistent Quality and both the fastest download and upload speeds.
- With only two operators in the Philippines to compare, Smart outperformed Globe in six out of the seven categories tested, with Globe taking out one category with best total coverage.
Vietnam:
- Viettel Mobile in Vietnam offered the best mobile experience to its users, winning in five categories and tying for first place with Vinaphone for fastest median download speeds.
- MobiFone was on the leaderboard in one category with the highest Core Consistent Quality.
