Last month, Opensignal, an independent global standard that analyses consumer mobile experience, released a report for the Mobile Network Experience in Malaysia. The data was gathered from a total of 971,486 devices in over 1 billion measurements from June to August 2019.
In this piece, we’re taking a closer look at how Celcom, one of the mobile network operators, did. Celcom topped the charts for 3 of the categories and performed very competitively in the others. Here’s what they did right.
Providing 4G Connectivity Almost Everywhere
In terms of 4G availability out of 100%, Celcom claimed a score of 87.7%. The score indicated that Celcom users with 4G capable devices were able to connect to an LTE network 87.7% of the time.
Unsurprisingly, the brand was Opensignal’s champion for this category. On Celcom’s end, they have more than 9,000 LTE sites nationwide, which they estimate covers 96% of the population in 10 out of the 14 states nationwide.
Quality Video Streaming On-The-Go
Many of us spend our downtime watching videos on YouTube, Facebook and Netflix. Opensignal’s Video Experience Category examines the quality of the video users gets while streaming on 3G or 4G.
With a score of 63.5, this means that Celcom users can get a consistent low-res stream with minor hiccups before and during the stream.
It’s beaten out other providers, but it seems we still have a while to go before we can enjoy high-quality videos without any interruptions while on-the-go in Malaysia.
Defeating A Gamer’s Worst Enemy
Latency turns the most patient of gamers to a raging hulk. So if you are a mobile gamer, using Celcom might just be your best chance to not unleash the inner beast.
Dictionary time: Latency is the average total time that it takes your gaming device to send data to the game server, and back to your device. You might know this as “lag”.
In terms of latency, the lower number is the better one—with Celcom scoring a 43.2ms in the report. The lower the latency, the smoother the online experience for games and even online voice-chat apps.
Keeping Up In Terms Of Speed
While they didn’t take the crown, Celcom wasn’t too far behind in terms of speed. The first place placed on the download and upload chart with 17.7Mbps and 6.6Mbps respectively. Celcom had speeds of 16.3Mbps and 6.4Mbps respectively.
However, Celcom was able to clinch the crown for streaming consistency.
For content creators, having a fast upload speed is as crucial as fast downloads. This means that you’ll be able to get your content out to the masses wherever you are, without worrying if your video was successfully uploaded.
Well-Balanced Overall
In Kuala Lumpur, Celcom topped 3 out of 6 of the categories and in Selangor, they secured 4 out of 6 of the categories and drew in one.
BONUS: 5G Readiness
Even back in 2017, Celcom conducted Malaysia’s first 5G trial and managed a peak throughput of 18GBps with 3ms of latency.
Fast forward to this year, the brand took charge of a 5G Live Cluster Trial around Petaling Jaya Sentral, to test how 5G would perform in real-life environments.
Dictionary Time: A throughput stands for the amount of material or items passing through a system or process.
The next big leap for the telco industry would be the inclusion of 5G-enabled devices, and the activation of 5G networks nationwide.
We’d be very interested to follow the telcos as they work towards this and that’s likely going to be a metric that industry standards like Opensignal will be watching closely too.
