Southeast Asians are unhappy with their 4G speeds – poll

THE MAJORITY of mobile web users in some Southeast Asian nations are dissatisfied with the 4G data speeds in their countries, according to Tech Wire Asia’s recent poll.

The highest number of unhappy users (693 polled) came from the Philippines, standing at a staggering 83 percent with only 17 percent of respondents saying they were satisfied.

Coming in second, 73 percent of Malaysian users (441 polled) felt their connections were slow, while the remaining 27 percent gave it a thumbs up.

Sixty-nine percent of Indonesians (394 polled) gave a negative response on the country’s connection, and 31 percent said they were satisfied.

Surprisingly, 56 percent of the 349 Singaporean users polled were not happy with their connection speeds even though the city-state was said to have the highest average speeds in the world at 44.32 Mbps.

Among the five Southeast Asian countries polled, Thailand had the least unhappy users at 45 percent of the 263 polled having a positive response while the remaining 55 percent saying they did not.

The Tech Wire Asia survey, which asked whether or not users in the five countries were happy with their mobile internet connection speeds, was conducted on Twitter between Feb 18 and Feb 25.

The poll came following a recent report by UK-based wireless coverage mapping specialist OpenSignal which, among others, found that Malaysia’s 4G mobile internet service is among the slowest of 88 countries surveyed.

The report titled “The State of LTE” stated that the average speed of a 4G line in Malaysia last year was 14.83 megabits per second (Mbps), putting it among the bottom 20 countries on the list, according to the Malay Mail Online.

The report indicated that Malaysia was still behind neighbors such as Vietnam (average speed 21.49 Mbps), Brunei (17.48 Mbps) and Burma (15.56 Mbps) although the service had been available for five years and promised internet speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia were the three other Southeast Asian countries listed as among the worst performers.

The global report came following analysis of some 50 billion measurements collected in the fourth quarter of 2017 to compare 4G performance in 88 countries.

The report said the 4G speed among top-performing countries had hit a plateau of 45 Mbps across the board, showing no marked increase in speeds.

“For more than a year now, the fastest countries in the world seem to be stuck in a holding pattern, getting close but not surpassing the 50 Mbps threshold for average 4G speed,” the report read.

However, the report said 4G availability continues to expand globally at a steady pace.

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