State of Mobile Networks: Indonesia (June 2018)

Since our last look at Indonesia six months ago, we've seen some of the same old trends continuing, as well as new trends being born. Access to 4G services continues to spread in the archipelago nation, reflected in the growth we are seeing in our LTE availability scores across Indonesia's operators. Telkomsel once again dominated our metrics, winning five out of seven awards categories, often by large margins. But we also saw Smartfren fully emerge from its 3G cocoon to spread its 4G wings. Not only did Smartfren again lead in our 4G availability metrics, it took our overall speed award away from Telkomsel.

For this report we examined 11.7 billion measurements from 1,235,257 mobile devices to examine the 3G and 4G experience offered by Indonesia's five major operators: Hutchison's 3 (Tri Indonesia), Indosat Ooredoo, Smartfren, Telkomsel and XL Axiata. In addition to analyzing our metrics on a national level, we expanded our metro analysis of Indonesia to include two new cities outside of Java. Let's start first with the metric with the most momentum: 4G availability.

4G's reach keeps growing

Four of Indonesia's five nationwide operators saw their 4G availability scores improve since our last report. Simply put, this means consumers had more access to 4G connections than they did six months ago. We recorded the biggest growth in availability on 3's network, a jump of more than 4 percentage points, but Indosat, Smartfren and XL all saw bumps of a least 2 percentage points in their scores. Smartfren remained the runaway leader in this category, reflecting its status as a 4G-only provider. Smartfren maintained a big 9-percentage-point lead over its nearest rival in our 4G availability metrics, but other operators managed to close the gap somewhat. 3 has passed the 80% availability mark in our measurements, while XL passed the 75% threshold.

The only operator for which we didn't record any improvement in LTE reach was Telkomsel, which saw its 4G availability hold steady at just under 70%. As a result Telkomsel fell to last place in our 4G availability rankings. But while the operator may have underperformed in availability, it stood out in the rest of OpenSignal's categories.

For the second report in a row, Telkomsel had a big lead over its competitors in our 4G download speed measurements. Its average tested download speed of 12.9 Mbps was more than 20% faster than its nearest rival. That said, Smartfren made some impressive 4G speed gains since our December report. Its average LTE download of 9.8 Mbps allowed it to leap over XL into the second-place slot in our measurements. Our results show Indosat's 4G download speed also improved, but 3, Telkomsel and XL all saw their download speeds fall over the last six months. In the global scheme of things, all of Indonesia's operators are still well short of the global 4G download average of 16.9 Mbps, as measured in our latest State of LTE report.

Telkomsel didn't just land at the top of our 4G download speed rankings, it took first prize in 4G upload speed and 3G download as well. Telkomsel's average 4G upload of 7.3 Mbps was more than 2 Mbps faster than XL's and 3's averages in our measurements, and more than double those of Indosat and Smartfren. As Indonesia's mobile consumers move more toward creating content (such as video sharing) and away from consuming content (web surfing), 4G upload is becoming a critical metric. In our 3G download category, Telkomsel again made short work of its competition. Its average HSPA download of 5 Mbps was not only more than 2 Mbps faster than its competitors' scores in our measurements, it was also nearly a megabit faster than the global average of 4.1 Mbps.

The only one of our speed categories Telkomsel didn't win was overall download speed, which measures the typical everyday speeds our users experienced across their operators' mobile data networks. In this metric, Telkomsel was hurt by its lagging 4G availability, while Smartfren was helped by its leading 4G availability and increased 4G speeds. Our results show that Smartfren jumped over Telkomsel into first place in our overall speed rankings with an average download of 9.8 Mbps compared to Telkomsel's average download of 8.4 Mbps. We're really starting to see the changing technology dynamics in Indonesia at play. Late last year, Smartfren shut down its 2G and 3G networks completely, leaving LTE as its sole option for mobile services. Consequently Smartfren has built out its 4G footprint to cover the places it had previously served with CDMA networks. Even though Telkomsel had the faster 3G and 4G speeds in our measurements, Smartfren was able to provide our users with a 4G connection more often, which ultimately gave it an edge in our overall speed results.

Our final two metrics were also wins for Telkomsel. Latency measures a network's response time — the lower the score, the faster web pages load and the less lag experienced in real-time communication apps like video chat. Telkomsel won our 4G latency award with a response time of 43.5 milliseconds as well as our 3G award with a latency of 81.2ms.

Telkomsel, Smartfren battle in the big cities

The winners of our national metrics were also the winners in most of the six cities we analyzed. Smartfren won our 4G availability awards in all six metro areas, while Telkomsel ran the table in 3G speed and both latency categories. But there were some notable upsets in our other regional metrics.

In 4G download speed, Smartfren beat Telkomsel in our Surabaya tests, and the two operators drew for the 4G speed award in Sulawesi's largest city Makassar. Meanwhile in our 4G upload speed metric, XL and Telkomsel tied for first place in Makassar. In several cities, we also recorded much faster LTE speeds — both download and upload — than the national averages. Our measurements show Telkmosel's 4G download speeds topped 19 Mbps in both Java's Bandung and Sumatran metropolis Medan, while Smartfren's 4G downloads exceeded 17 Mbps in Surabaya.

Our most contested metric on the city level was overall download speed. Smartfren may have won that award nationally, but Telkomsel showed that it was a force to contend with in Bandung and Medan, where it won our overall speed awards respectively by 4-Mbps and 5-Mbps margins. In Surabaya, Smartfren took the overall speed crown with a whopping 6-Mbps lead, and it won the award in capital Jakarta as well. In the remaining two cities, Makassar and Semarang, the two operators were close enough in our overall speed measurements to produce statistical draws.

The close contest in overall speeds throughout the streets and buildings of Indonesia's big cities is perhaps the best indication of the larger battle to come — one that will be fought between two extremes. Telkomsel is a global giant whose huge subscriber numbers exceed the population of most countries. Smartfren is the tiny challenger of the group, with a fraction of Telkomsel's users and financial might, but it has focused its resources on 4G services in a big way. With no 2G or 3G networks to fall back on, Smartfren will live or die by its LTE network. So far that LTE service hasn't disappointed and is only improving.