State of Mobile Networks: Malaysia (March 2016)

Unlike so many other countries in the world, Malaysia has no 4G speed king. Three years after its ﬁrst LTE network came online, the country's operators are locked in a close battle for 4G dominance, though one provider, Maxis, holds an edge due to its superior LTE availability. Drawing on 40 million data samples collected by 21,000 OpenSignal users between Dec. 1 and Feb. 29, we put Malaysia under the network microscope, examining the 3G and 4G performance of its four nationwide operators.

Report Facts 39,621,885 21,109 Dec 1, Malaysia Measurements Test Devices 2015 - Feb Report 29, 2016 Location Sample Period

Highlights

Maxis leads the way in 4G availability A three-way race for fastest 4G provider

Maxis won OpenSignal's award for best 4G availability hands There was no clear-cut winner in LTE speed for our test period. DiGi, down. In our three-month test period, Maxis 4G users were able Maxis and U Mobile all delivered average LTE download speeds to connect to its LTE network 70% of the time, putting it not only between 12 and 14 Mbps, close enough to produce a three-way well ahead of its Malaysian peers but the majority of operators statistical tie. When we measured average speed across all mobile data worldwide. networks, Maxis emerged as the winner with an overall download speed of 5.2 Mbps.

Celcom's 4G service struggles Malaysian networks keep up with global

Of the four major Malaysian operators, Celcom performed the technology trends worst on the national level, lagging behind its competitors in Malaysia's 4G networks aren't the fastest in the world, but they are close speed, availability and even latency. In Malaysia's Klang Valley to matching the global average of 13.5 Mbps. Like many other countries surrounding Kuala Lumpur, though, Celcom fared far better. The worldwide, Malaysia is also testing out new LTE-Advanced technologies. operator shared the award for fastest 3G network with U Mobile and tied for second in 4G availability.

Awards Table

Download Speed: 4G Download Speed: 3G Download Speed: OverallLatency: 4G Latency: 3G Availability: 4G

Celcom

DiGi

Maxis

U Mobile

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Performance by Metric

Download Speed: 4G

This metric shows the average download speed for each Celcom operator on LTE connections as measured by OpenSignal users.

DiGi

Maxis

U Mobile

0 Mbps 3 Mbps 6 Mbps 9 Mbps 12 Mbps 15 Mbps

Download Speed: 3G

This metric shows the average download speed for each Celcom operator on 3G connections as measured by OpenSignal users.

DiGi

Maxis

U Mobile

0 Mbps 1 Mbps 2 Mbps 3 Mbps 4 Mbps 5 Mbps

Download Speed: Overall

This metric shows the average download speed experienced by OpenSignal users across all of an operator's 3G and 4G Celcom networks. Overall speed doesn't just factor in 3G and LTE speeds, but also the availability of each network technology. DiGi Operators with lower LTE availability tend to have lower overall speeds because their customers spend more time connected to slower 3G networks. Maxis

U Mobile

0 Mbps 2 Mbps 4 Mbps 6 Mbps 8 Mbps 10 Mbps

Latency: 4G

This metric shows the average latency for each operator on LTE Celcom connections as measured by OpenSignal users. Latency, measured in milliseconds, is the delay data experiences as it DiGi makes a round trip through the network. A lower score in this metric is a sign of a more responsive network. Maxis

U Mobile

0 ms 12 ms 24 ms 36 ms 48 ms 70 ms

Latency: 3G

This metric shows the average latency for each operator on 3G Celcom connections as measured by OpenSignal users. Latency, measured in milliseconds, is the delay data experiences as it DiGi makes a round trip through the network. A lower score in this metric is a sign of a more responsive network. Maxis

U Mobile

0 ms 22 ms 44 ms 66 ms 88 ms 110 ms 130 ms

Availability: 4G

This metric shows the proportion of time OpenSignal users have Celcom an LTE connection available to them on each operator’s network. It's a measure of how often users can access a 4G network DiGi rather than a measure of geographic or population coverage.

Maxis

U Mobile

0 % 13 % 26 % 39 % 52 % 75 %

Analysis

Malaysia's ﬁrst LTE networks came online in 2013, and in the intervening three years, the country's four major operators have built out a 4G infrastructure that's kept pace with the rest of the world. The Tiger Cub economy is delivering 4G speeds just short Our Methodology of the global average of 13.5 Mbps, and its operators are already expanding network capacity, boosting speeds with new technology and oﬀering new 4G services like OpenSignal measures the real-world experience of voice over LTE. The one area where Malaysia still trails globally is overall 4G consumers on mobile networks as they go about their daily lives. We collect 2 billion individual availability. measurements every day from tens of millions of smartphones worldwide. Of Malaysia's four major service providers, Maxis in particular distinguished itself in the three months of testing for this report. It won awards in two of the six categories Our measurements are collected at all hours of the we measured outright, and tied for the lead in three others. Most notably it won day, every day of the year, under conditions of OpenSignal's award for the LTE network with the highest level of availability. Our normal usage, including inside buildings and availability (*) metric measures the proportion of time users can see a signal on a outdoors, in cities and the countryside, and everywhere in between. By analyzing on-device particular network. In the case of Maxis, 4G availability was 70%. Neither Celcom, measurements recorded in the places where DiGi nor U Mobile scored higher than 58%. subscribers actually live, work and travel, we report on mobile network service the way users truly In terms of speed, operators were more closely matched. We measured average 4G experience it. download speeds for U Mobile at 13.8 Mbps, Maxis at 13 Mbps and DiGi at 12.4 Mbps, but the overlapping statistical margins on those results produced a three-way We continually adapt our methodology to best represent the changing experience of consumers on draw between the operators. U Mobile, however, won OpenSignal's award for fastest mobile networks and, therefore, comparisons of the 3G network. U Mobile had an average 3G download speed of 3.3 Mbps, beating out results to past reports should be considered all of its competitors even though it shares 3G infrastructure with Maxis outside of indicative only. For more information on how we urban markets. collect and analyze our data, see our methodology page.

When we factored in both 3G and 4G networks and their respective availability metrics, though, Maxis clearly came out on top. Because of its superior LTE For this particular report, 39,621,885 datapoints were collected from 21,109 users during the period: availability, its customers were able to connect to its faster 4G network more often, Dec 1, 2015 - Feb 29, 2016. pushing their average overall download speeds to 5.2 Mbps.

For every metric we've calculated statistical A closer look at the capital conﬁdence intervals and plotted them on all of the graphs. When conﬁdence intervals overlap for a For this report we also examined network performance in Malaysia's Klang Valley, certain metric, our measured results are too close to declare a winner in a particular category. In those which encompasses Kuala Lumpur and surrounding cities, and found the region cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, generally followed national trends for speed while improving on network availability. some metrics have multiple operator winners. Maxis continued to dominate in availability providing an LTE signal 77% of the time in the Klang Valley. Celcom and DiGi battled for second place with availability metrics around 66%.

While Celcom did quite poorly on the national level — ﬁnishing last or tied for last in every category — its networks performed much better in Malaysia's economic center. In addition to improved 4G availability in the Klang Valley, it shared the regional award for fastest 3G network with U Mobile with both operators averaging about 3 Mbps. Celcom still couldn't match its peers in LTE speeds in the capital region where we saw the same three-way draw we found on the national level. U Mobile, Maxis and DiGi all averaged between 13 and 14 Mbps in 4G download speeds, compared to Celcom's average of 10.6 Mbps. When we calculated combined 3G and 4G regional performance, though, Maxis again emerged as the overall speed-award winner. Due to its superior LTE availability, Maxis's overall average speed in the Klang Valley came in at 6.5 Mbps, beating all of its competitors by nearly a megabit.

What the future holds

The ﬁnal metric we calculated was network latency, which is essentially the time it takes data to make a round trip through the network. It's an important measure of how responsive a 3G or 4G service is. A low latency connection means web pages begin to load faster after the initial click, and subscribers experience less delay when using real-time communications apps. On the 4G side of the network, we again had a three-way tie for the lowest-latency award between DiGi, Maxis and U-Mobile. This metric will be particularly important to DiGi as that operator plans to launch a commercial voice over LTE service this year. Reduced latency will mean better quality calls.

In addition to VoLTE, DiGi is rolling out new LTE networks using old 2G spectrum in the 1800 MHz band. That upgrade eﬀectively doubles its overall 4G capacity and thanks to an LTE technology called carrier aggregation, could double the speeds available over some connections. Maxis is also expanding 4G into the 1800 MHz band, but has gone one step further. It's upgrading its networks with LTE-Advanced technologies, which — theoretically at least — should give it the most powerful 4G network in Malaysia. As these new technologies make it to more cities and spread to the country's other operators, Malaysia may no longer merely keep up with global LTE trends. It could start exceeding them.

(*) Editor’s note: When this report was originally published OpenSignal used the term time coverage for what is now our availability metric. We changed the name to avoid confusion of this metric with geographic and population coverage metrics, and we have reﬂected that change in our old reports. The new terminology, however, does not reﬂect a new methodology. Time coverage and availability represent the same measurement: the proportion of time OpenSignal users can connect to a particular network.

OpenSignal, Inc retains ownership of this report including all intellectual property rights, data, content, graphs & analysis. Reports produced by OpenSignal, Inc may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed, published for any commercial purpose (including use in advertisements or other promotional content) without prior written consent.

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