Taiwan

Taiwan Mobile and FarEasTone tied for first place in our 4G Availability metric with Taiwan scoring 96% and FET achieving 95.8%. These two operators now surpass the 95% mark when it comes to 4G Availability.

It should be noted that GT made significant strides in our recent test period due to its new roaming agreement with Taiwan Mobile. The operator increased its 4G Availability score by 5.7 percentage points from 89% in our June 2019 report to 94.7% in the current report. GT now falls just slightly behind FET and Taiwan Mobile in 4G Availability and has nearly hit the 95% availability milestone.

Taiwan's operators are strong in 4G Availability. Users on all five of Taiwan’s wireless networks experienced 4G Availability scores over 90%, indicating it is easy to find a 4G connection in the country.

When it comes to delivering a decent video experience, not many operators can achieve an Excellent rating (75-100 in our 100-point scale)in Opensignal’s Video Experience metric. In our 2019 Mobile Video Experience report for the first time six countries achieved Excellent ratings — Norway, the Czech Republic, Austria, Denmark, Hungary and the Netherlands — but all those countries were in Europe. It’s notable that one of Taiwan’s operators — CHT — has achieved the distinction of earning an Excellent rating in video experience with a 75.0 rating.

In addition, three of Taiwan’s other operators — FET, Taiwan Mobile and T Star — all landed in the Very Good range. That means that users experienced short load times and minimal stalling during their video playback. GT was the only operator to miss out on a Very Good rating, scoring 61.5, which earned it a Good rating.

When it comes to 4G Video Experience, CHT once again earned an Excellent range (75-100) with a score of 77.0. Taiwan Mobile was a close second with a score of 74.8 in 4G Video Experience, but that still places it in the Very Good range.

It’s not surprising that, when it comes to 3G Video Experience, all Taiwanese operators see their scores drop. GT is the only operator excluded from this category because it doesn’t have a 3G network. It’s also notable that in the 3G Video Experience, CHT, which scored an Excellent ranking in 4G Video Experience, falls to third place in 3G Video Experience with a score of 50.2, which puts it in the Fair category.

The use of voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger is becoming more popular thanks to ubiquitous mobile broadband. These apps offer a new way for users to talk to each other and Opensignal is now measuring the quality of our users’ experience on these apps.

In Opensignal’s inaugural Voice App Experience analysis, four of the five operators in Taiwan achieved scores of 80 and above on a scale of 1-100. All four operators received a Good ranking (80-87), which means that most users on their network were satisfied with the voice app experience but some users might have experienced minor quality problems such as background noise, clicking or other distortion.

In terms of a winner, there was a tie. Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) secured a score of 82.2 and Taiwan Mobile achieved a score of 82.

GT secured the lowest score in the Voice App category with 78.4 points, which puts it in the Acceptable range and means that users are satisfied with their experience but may have some call quality issues such as clicking sounds or distortion and/or the volume may not be sufficiently loud.

No operator fell below the Acceptable rating, which is explained by the high degree of 4G Availability from Taiwanese operators.

In addition to the Voice App Experience metric, Opensignal also reported on two supporting measurements related to the voice app — 4G Voice App Experience and 3G Voice App Experience.

In 4G Voice App Experience, CHT earned an 82.7 score, Taiwan Mobile scored 82.3, FET earned an 82.0 score, and T-Star achieved an 81.3 score. All of these earned a Good rating (80-87) on a scale of 1-100. GT was the only operator to receive an Acceptable score (78.5).

Not surprisingly, four operators’ rankings dropped in the 3G Voice App Experience category. FET ranked first with a score of 75.8, followed by CHT with 75.7 and Taiwan Mobile with 75.4. This puts these three operators in the Acceptable category (74-80) for 3G Voice App Experience. T Star had a score of 69.2, which makes it the only operator with a Poor ranking (66-74). A Poor ranking means that many users were dissatisfied because of call quality problems such as distortion, clicking sounds or silence.

CHT continues to dominate its rivals in Download Speed Experience. The overall download speed experienced by Chunghwa users was 37.1 Mbps, a 9% increase over its score of 34.1 Mbps in our June report. It was also 6.6 Mbps faster than its closest rival, FET, and 8.4 Mbps faster than Taiwan Mobile users in our measurements. GT and T Star were quite far behind in Download Speed Experience, with average speeds experienced below 18.1 Mbps.

When we look at Download Speed Experience by technology type, CHT maintains its lead in 4G Download Speed with a score of 39.6 Mbps. CHT 4G speeds are 7.6 Mbps faster than FET, its closest rival which has a score of 32.0. In 3G Download Speed, CHT still leads with 5.7 Mbps. This is slower than the speeds we recorded in our June 2019 report. At that time we recorded CHT with 3G Download Speeds of 7.4 Mbps and FarEasTone with 3G Download Speeds of 7.2 Mbps. Taiwan is in the process of shutting down its HSPA networks and that is likely the reason for the declining speeds.

CHT may dominate in Download Speed Experience, but it doesn’t have the same clout in Upload Speed Experience. FET won this category with our users clocking an upload speed of 11.1 Mbps. CHT and Taiwan Mobile tied for second place, with our users hitting upload speeds of 10.7 Mbps.

Interestingly, when we break down 3G versus 4G connections, we find our users on FET topping 11.7 Mbps in the 4G Upload Speeds they experience, while users on CHT had 11.5 Mbps in 4G Upload Speeds. GT users meanwhile saw significantly lower 4G Upload Speeds of just 4.5 Mbps. Our users connecting on 3G networks from FET and Taiwan Mobile saw upload speeds of 1.4 Mbps and 1.3 Mbps respectively.

Users on four of the five operators in Taiwan had Latency Experience scores under 40 milliseconds, which speaks favorably of their networks. GT, however, had a latency score of 42.8ms —more than 10ms slower than T Star, which won this category with a Latency score of 30.3ms.

When we break out connections by technology type, we find T Star remains the leader with a 4G Latency score of 27.5ms, nearly 3ms faster than Taiwan Mobile, which had a Latency score of 30.6ms. Users on T Star, however, had the worst 3G Latency, with a 65.2ms score.

CHT was the winner in Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience with a score of 9.8 on a scale of 1-10. FET and Taiwan Mobile were a draw for second place both with scores of 9.5. This is the first time Opensignal measured its users 4G Coverage Experience in Taiwan. The higher the number means our users experienced 4G Coverage in more locations of higher relative importance according to the population that spends time in them.

This new Opensignal metric is not based on any measure of time connected to the network and it includes areas where users have attempted to use their device, regardless of whether an operator has coverage or not.