Mobile Networks Update: Singapore (November 2018)

Singapore's 4G networks don't need much by way of improvement. The country consistently ranks among the top three globally in LTE and overall download speeds, its network response times are unparalleled, and though Singapore doesn't top the charts in 4G availability, its LTE reach is still excellent. Singapore is well past the stage where it's making big leaps in any of our 3G or 4G metrics, but nonetheless we are seeing some improvements from operators in our results. In our first Mobile Networks Update for Singapore, we analyzed more than 179 million measurements collected from 14,155 devices between Aug. 1 and Oct. 29, 2018, to see how Singapore's three major operators compared.

  • The biggest changes we recorded since our last Singapore report came in 4G availability. StarHub experienced a 4 percentage point uptick in 4G availability over the last six months, bringing its score to 87.1%. Our results also show a smaller increase in M1's 4G availability score to 88%. Neither gain was enough for either operator to surpass the category leader Singtel, which won our 4G availability award with a score just short of 90%. But all three operators are now extremely close in this metric with less than 3 percentage points separating them.
  • While we saw some incremental improvements in M1's and Singtel's 4G download speed results, the speed metric where we saw the most movement was 3G download. We recorded at least 1-Mbps gains for all three operators in 3G download speed. StarHub's boost in our 4G availability metric also contributed to an increase in its overall download speed result. Its average connection of 42.2 Mbps makes it the first operator in Singapore to cross the 40 Mbps threshold in our overall download speed measurements.
  • Except for a slight improvement in StarHub's 4G latency score, we didn't see many changes in our response time metrics. But M1 and Singtel's latency results are still worth calling out. With network response times below 28 milliseconds, the two operators have some of the best latency results in the world in our measurements.

Opensignal Awards Table

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

M1

medal

Singtel

medal medal

StarHub

medal medal medal

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Performance by Metric

Download Speed: 4G

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

Download Speed: 3G

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

Download Speed: Overall

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

Latency: 4G

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

Latency: 3G

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

Availability: 4G

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

Our Methodology

Opensignal measures the real-world experience of consumers on mobile networks as they go about their daily lives. We collect 3 billion individual measurements every day from tens of millions of smartphones worldwide.

Our measurements are collected at all hours of the day, every day of the year, under conditions of normal usage, including inside buildings and outdoors, in cities and the countryside, and everywhere in between. By analyzing on-device measurements recorded in the places where subscribers actually live, work and travel, we report on mobile network service the way users truly experience it.

For this particular report, 179,604,972 datapoints were collected from 14,155 users during the period: 2018-08-01 - 2018-10-29.

We continually adapt our methodology to best represent the changing experience of consumers on mobile networks and, therefore, comparisons of the results to past reports should be considered indicative only. For more information on how we collect and analyze our data, see our methodology page.

For every metric we've calculated statistical confidence intervals and plotted them on all of the graphs. When confidence intervals overlap for a certain metric, our measured results are too close to declare a winner in a particular category. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners.

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