Mobile Networks Update: Indonesia (December 2018)

Telkomsel is further cementing its dominant position in our mobile experience metrics. In our latest 3G and 4G tests, the Indonesian giant won six of our seven awards, and it made big strides in our seventh category, 4G availability. Meanwhile all of Indonesia's operators are rapidly expanding the reach of their LTE networks, an indication that the market is approaching maturity. In our first Mobile Networks Update for Indonesia, we parsed more than 5 billion measurements collected from 937,410 devices between Aug. 1 and Oct. 29, 2018, to see how the country's five major operators compared.

  • The race to expand LTE's reach is unrelenting in Indonesia. Since our last report in June, we've recorded significant growth in all five operators' 4G availability scores. In some cases that growth was quite astonishing. Indosat's LTE availability jumped nearly 10 percentage points in our measurements to 80.3%, while Telkomsel's score increased by 9 percentage points to 77.5%. Four of Indonesia's five operators were able to provide an LTE connection to our users more than 80% of the time. Despite its competitors' rapid improvements, LTE-only operator Smartfren was able to hold onto our 4G availability award with a very impressive score of 94.3%.

  • Telkomsel's 4G speeds received a big boost in the last six months. Its average 4G download speed increased 1.5 Mbps to 14.4 Mbps in our analysis, which — coupled with its gains in 4G availability — led to an increase in Telkomsel's overall download speed score. In our last report, Smartfren won the overall download speed crown, but our analysis shows Smartfren's 4G download speeds took a significant dip over the last six months, causing its overall download speeds to drop. Those combined trends allowed Telkomsel to wrest the overall download speed award away from Smartfren in this report.

  • Telkomsel continues to dominate our 3G and 4G metrics on both the national level and in Indonesia's largest cities — and its grip on our awards is getting tighter. In our analysis of six Indonesian cities, Telkomsel won every single one of our speed and latency awards outright (with the sole exception of 4G upload speed in Makassar). Even in that city, Telkomsel tied for our 4G upload award with XL Axiata.

  • The only one of our metrics where Telkomsel lagged was 4G availability, but as our most recent test results show, it has gained a lot of ground in that category. If it continues to improve its 4G availability scores at the same rapid pace, it could very well make a clean sweep of our entire awards table in future reports.

Opensignal Awards Table

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

3

Indosat

Smartfren

 medal

Telkomsel

 medal medal medal medal medal medal

XL

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Performance by Metric

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

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.

Upload Speed: 4G

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

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.

Regional Performance

This chart shows the regional winners in each category Opensignal measures. Click on the icons to see a more detailed graph showing each operator’s metrics in a particular region.

Legend: Indosat XL Smartfren Telkomsel 3
RegionDownload Speed: 4GDownload Speed: 3GDownload Speed: OverallUpload Speed: 4GLatency: 4GLatency: 3GAvailability: 4G
Bandung
Jakarta
Makassar
Medan
Semarang
Surabaya

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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, 5,142,122,245 datapoints were collected from 937,410 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.

Opensignal Limited retains ownership of this report including all intellectual property rights, data, content, graphs & analysis. Reports produced by Opensignal Limited may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed, published for any commercial purpose (including use in advertisements or other promotional content) without prior written consent.