After analyzing mobile experience across 20 Asia Pacific (APAC) markets last month, Opensignal now examines the mobile network performance in 18 most populous individual cities within these markets.
Key Findings:
- Seoul leads APAC cities in both Reliability Experience and Consistent Quality.
- Seoul stands first in Availability and holds the runner-up position in 5G Availability, behind only Mumbai. Seoul also tops speed categories, both the overall and the 5G experience.
- Users in Mumbai and Colombo see the largest uplift between 4G and 5G for download and upload speeds.
In the Asia Pacific region, Seoul ranks first for Reliability Experience with a score of 925 points on a 100-1000 point scale while Tokyo places second, with a score just two points behind the front-runner. Other cities like New Taipei also exceed 900 points for Reliability Experience. Dhaka, Karachi, and Yangon trail behind other APAC cities, reflecting their poor national performance in both metrics.
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.
In terms of Consistent Quality, Seoul ranks first, followed by New Taipei in second place. At the other end of the spectrum, Yangon ranks last as Myanmar is constrained by infrastructure damage and network shutdowns. Karachi also ranks towards the bottom, with service reliability hampered by frequent power outages. The latest outage has impacted essential communication tools like WhatsApp, which serves as a vital platform for personal, business, and political communication in the region.
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.
Eight cities experience high Availability, maintaining 3G or better mobile connectivity for over 99% of the time. 5G Availability scores are more varying across APAC markets with 4G remaining the dominant technology in most markets. India stands as an exception, where provider Jio is deploying standalone 5G.
5G users in Mumbai, Seoul, and Kuala Lumpur have an active 5G connection over 40% of the time. In contrast, 5G users in other APAC cities (Manilla, Tokyo, Auckland, Colombo, and Jakarta) have 5G connectivity less than 20% of the time. High-scale 5G Standalone roll-outs in India drive Mumbai’s high 5G Availability score, especially in the 3.5GHz band used for 5G deployments in urban areas. Meanwhile, other APAC markets are yet to launch 5G Standalone network at a major scale.
Opensignal’s Availability metric measures what proportion of time people have a 3G, 4G or 5G signal, while 5G Availability is the proportion of time that our 5G users have an active 5G connection.
5G Availability gaps across APAC markets largely stem from differences in spectrum band allocation. As observed in our November 2023 report, Indonesia lags behind other regional markets due to two key challenges: limited access to crucial 5G spectrum bands like 3.5GHz, and the logistical complexity of deploying networks across its archipelago landscape. This island geography requires significant infrastructure investment.
Seoul users enjoy the highest speeds, with overall average download speeds of 168.1Mbps and upload speeds of 25.3Mbps. Seoul’s superior performance stems from South Korea's early adoption of 5G technology, With over 50% of mobile connections running on 5G networks, South Korea leads the APAC region in 5G adoption, as per GSMA Intelligence. Seoul's widespread 5G adoption has reduced congestion on 4G networks, boosting speeds for users still using older technology. The city's aggressive 5G rollout has extended even to public Wi-Fi on city buses being transitioned to 5G.
Seoul continues to dominate 5G speeds across Asia Pacific, topping both download and upload rankings as it did in Opensignal’s previous city benchmarking report in 2022. This is no surprise, as South Korea's head start in 5G development has allowed its networks to mature beyond other cities in the region.
Auckland claims second place for 5G download speeds at 293.3Mbps and fourth for upload speeds at 29.2Mbps.
Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is far behind other Asia Pacific cities in 5G download speeds. Unlike in the case of other markets in the region, Indonesian operators do not have access to the 3.5GHz band and mainly rely on Dynamis Spectrum Sharing to provide 5G services (using bands 2100MHz and 2300MHz) for 5G roll-outs. Satellite services have part of the 3.5GHz range assigned in Indonesia, which currently means limited spectrum resources for 5G deployments compared to other APAC markets.However, the spectrum availability is likely to improve in Indonesia next year, with Kominfo planning to auction three spectrum bands for 5G deployments — 700MHz, 2.6GHz and 26GHz.
Among cities just beginning their 5G rollout, Mumbai and Colombo see the large jump from 4G to 5G speeds. While Mumbai saw a much larger speed increase than Colombo, there's a stark contrast in adoption rates. In Sri Lanka, where Colombo is located, 5G adoption remains low with less than 2% of users having 5G-capable devices according to GSMA Intelligence.
APAC cities show considerable variation in gaming, video, and voice app experiences, mainly stemming from their differing download and upload speed capabilities. Seoul is the leading city 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.
In markets with 5G networks, users enjoy better video, gaming, and voice app experiences, with the performance gaps between leaders and laggards becoming notably smaller. Three cities now have 5G Games Experience scores of more than 90 points. Seoul leads in both 5G Games Experience and 5G Voice Experience, and ties for first in 5G Video Experience with New Taipei. Hong Kong closely competes with Seoul, narrowly trailing in both 5G Games Experience and 5G Video Experience.
Our users in Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, New Taipei, and Kuala Lumpur all report an Excellent experience (scoring 85 or above) for 5G Games Experience. For on-demand video streaming, only New Taipei and Seoul achieve an Excellent rating (78 or above), meaning users can consistently watch 1080p content with quick loading times and smooth playback.
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