Benchmarking the Asia Pacific Mobile Network Experience – September 2024

In this analysis, Opensignal evaluates the mobile experience of our users across 20 markets in Asia Pacific (APAC). 

Key Findings:

• Japan and Taiwan lead in both Reliability Experience and Consistent Quality.
• India leads in 5G Availability while Singapore comes in first for 5G Coverage Experience compared to the other APAC markets with public 5G networks.
• South Korea leads in speed categories, both the overall and the 5G experience. 
• Users in Sri Lanka, India, and Malaysia see the largest uplift between 4G and 5G for download and upload speeds.
• South Korea comes first for experiential metrics, both overall and in the 5G categories — Video Experience, Games Experience, and Voice App Experience — with Singapore following in second place in the 5G categories.

Opensignal’s Reliability Experience measures the ability of Opensignal users to connect to and successfully complete (basic) tasks on communication service providers’ (CSP) networks. It analyzes how much Opensignal users’ experience is affected by the radio access and core network, along with issues that prevent them from connecting to the internet even if they have a connection to their CSP’s network. It also factors in users’ ability to successfully use lower performance applications including SD video, over-the-top voice calls and web browsing.

Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea ranked in the top 10 worldwide when Opensignal introduced the Reliability Experience metric with our Global Reliability Experience Report in February 2024. 

Consistent Quality measures if the network is sufficient to support common mobile application requirements at a level that is ‘good enough’ for users to maintain (or complete) various typical tasks on their devices. 

The Asia Pacific region consists of many markets that have been at the forefront of 5G adoption. As of 2Q 2024, seven markets in the Asia Pacific region (South Korea, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan) have a third or more of their respective mobile subscriber bases on 5G connections, but 4G will remain the region’s dominant technology at least through 2030 according to GSMA Intelligence.

Availability is high among most APAC markets, with our users remaining connected to a 3G or better mobile signal for over 99% of the time in eight of the 20 tracked markets. When it comes to 5G Availability, larger disparities appear between scores. Opensignal’s Availability metric measures what proportion of time people have a network connection, in the places they most commonly frequent — something often missed by traditional coverage metrics. When it comes to 5G Availability, one of the primary drivers behind the gaps between markets in the APAC region is the allocation of spectrum bands for 5G services. As observed in our November 2023 report, Indonesia trails its regional counterparts in 5G Availability, primarily due to the lack of access to key 5G spectrum bands such as the 3.5GHz band. Additionally, Indonesia’s archipelagic landscape poses distinctive challenges. Deploying an extensive 5G network across its many islands is logistically complex and demands substantial investment

Opensignal’s 5G Coverage Experience measures the geographic 5G coverage of populated areas to accurately reflect the coverage expectations and experience of typical users.The city-state of Singapore shines, with nearly universal 5G coverage. South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia take the next spots before a sizable gap separates them from the rest of the APAC countries with 5G networks.

The APAC region has seen a number of agreements between companies that should help boost 5G Availability and 5G Coverage Experience in the near future. KDDI and SoftBank in Japan have outlined plans to expand the scope of their 5G network-sharing agreement, pledging to build out 100,000 base stations each and achieve JPY 120 billion ($770 million) in cost savings. Their goal of enhanced network resilience should help boost both Availability and Consistent Quality. In Australia TPG Telecom and Optus agreed to set up a multi-operator core network. This agreement will see the two operators sharing spectrum in addition to physical network assets to facilitate regional coverage, cost efficiencies, and 5G deployment.

South Korean users enjoy the fastest overall download and upload speeds, with 133.3Mbps and 21.4Mbps, respectively. South Korea benefits from the highest percentage of 5G connections in the APAC region, with 5G accounting for over half of all connections in the country, as per GSMA Intelligence data. 5G speeds are typically faster than 4G, helping boost performance in our overall metrics. The high share of 5G connections also reduces congestion on legacy 4G networks, helping increase speeds for users who haven’t migrated to the latest technology yet — which we observed in the case of 5G development in Brazil. Singapore and Taiwan take second and third place for Download Speed Experience, while Vietnam is the runner-up for Upload Speed Experience, ahead of Singapore.

South Korea is a leader in 5G network development since it was the first country to launch a public 5G network in 2019. This has given it ample opportunity to evolve the technology which has manifested in average 5G download and upload speeds that far exceed those of other countries in the APAC region.

Malaysia ranks second in 5G Download Speed Experience and third in 5G Upload Speed Experience, with scores of 295.5Mbps and 34Mbps, respectively. This performance is achieved through Malaysia’s 5G wholesale network where 5G Availability ranks in the top five for APAC markets at 31.8%. Despite this positive performance from a network perspective, Malaysia’s MNOs are now bidding to build the country’s second 5G network.

As Opensignal has previously reported, India’s 5G Download speeds have fallen as data consumption has increased.  Its 5G download score has decreased from 304Mbps in Q1 2023 to 243Mbps in this report. Mobile tends to be the primary mode of connectivity in India, and download speeds tend to be at their slowest in the evening hours when users are most likely to stream video, watch games, and do online shopping.

Indonesia lags behind other APAC markets primarily due to its lack of mobile spectrum, as the 3.5GHz band is still used by satellite services. Our Indonesian 5G users spend just 1.5% of their time with an active 5G signal (up from 1% compared to our November 2023 report). With 5G download speeds of just 54.6Mbps, Indonesia sees the least amount of uplift between 4G and 5G download speeds, with 5G download speeds averaging just 2.3x faster than 4G download speeds.

Of those that are in the earlier stages of deploying their 5G networks, India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia have seen the largest speed uplift between 4G and 5G. While Sri Lanka’s 4G to 5G uplift for download speeds is significantly higher than Malaysia’s, less than 2% of Sri Lanka’s base is on 5G capable devices while over 37% of Malaysia’s total connections are 5G connections according to GSMA Intelligence. 

Games, video, and voice app experiences show significant differences between the top and bottom-performing markets. Due in large part to their region-leading download and upload speed experience performance, South Korea is the leader in the APAC region when it comes to these experience metrics. It is the only market to place in the Excellent (85 or above) category for the overall Games Experience. This means the vast majority of users deem this network experience acceptable and there is not a noticeable delay in almost all cases. According to data.ai, South Korea ranked second in the world for mobile game consumer spend on the Google Play store, and Asia Pacific was the world's biggest region for consumer spend on mobile games, accounting for 49% of market share in 2023.

There is a smaller gap between South Korea and the rest of the countries in the region in these metrics than in download and upload speed experiences. Our users in Japan and Singapore enjoy experiences that are closely compared to those of South Korean users. 

For the countries that have launched 5G networks, the new technology helps improve experience scores for video, gaming, and voice applications, and the gaps between the top and bottom-performing markets are much narrower. The introduction of 5G networks has coincided with smart innovation dedicated to specific app experiences. An example is Jio, which has introduced network slicing with dedicated slices for gaming, high-security services, and FWA customers, among other applications. 

Our users in South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Taiwan have an Excellent (85 or above) experience when gaming on mobile devices. South Korea is the only market in the analyzed group to place in the Excellent (78 or above) category for 5G Video Experience. This means our users are, on average, able to stream video at 1080p or better with fast loading times and no stalling.

The Asia Pacific region contains markets that vary significantly in terms of their mobile network experience. These disparities are driven by differences in timelines and scales of 5G deployments and by varying reliance on previous mobile generations. Future iterations of this benchmarking report will continue to track both 5G and overall performance to reflect Opensignal users’ real-world experiences. 

Please tune in for our 5G Global Mobile Network Experience Awards coming in October 2024 which will highlight the best-performing operators and celebrate the mobile industry’s achievements.