Indonesia

With smartphones being the primary screen, and wireless internet the preferred mode to access content online in Indonesia, video streaming on both global and local platforms has been expanding across the country. And in the last few months, with large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) in place, Indonesian users are consuming videos on Youtube, Netflix and other online streaming services — for entertainment, education or getting critical news updates — more than ever, making good Video Experience an exceedingly important aspect of users’ mobile network experience. That said, let us see how Indonesian operators stack up in our Video Experience metric, which measures video quality streamed over mobile networks to devices on a 100-point scale, taking video load time, stalling rates and picture resolution into account.

When it comes to streaming video over a smartphone, one operator continues to stand out in Indonesia. Once again, Telkomsel won our Video Experience award and maintained a Good rating (55-65) with a score of 62.9. The operator remains strikingly ahead of its peers — 8.5 points ahead of second-placed XL, whose score was less than a point shy of achieving a Good rating. While Indosat and 3 remained with XL in the Fair rating category with a score of 53.1 and 52.8 points respectively, Smartfren still placed in the Poor rating category with 34.4.

While the winner of the Video Experience award has not changed, the quality of our users’ Video Experience has definitely improved on all the networks — except Smartfren’s — since the last report. Our users on Indosat were the biggest gainers, as Indosat’s score grew by 11.4 points, followed by their counterparts on 3, Telkomsel and XL, who reported an increase of 3.6-5.2 points in the last six months.

When we isolated the Video Experience on 4G connections, Telkomsel garnered a Very Good rating, while XL, Indosat and 3 earned a Good rating; Smartfren’s rating remained unchanged as its overall score represents 4G connections only.

In this report, we took our first look at the Games Experience in Indonesia at the operator level. Our Games Experience metric measures real-world mobile network conditions to assess the mobile multiplayer games experience perceived by our users on different cellular networks. Measured on a scale of 0-100, it analyzes how the multiplayer mobile Games Experience is affected by mobile network conditions including UDP latency, packet loss and jitter to determine the impact on gameplay and the overall multiplayer Games Experience.

Opensignal considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games, such as Battle Royale and MOBA games. Examples of these genres include PUBG, Fortnite, Arena of Valor and Brawl Stars. On Android phones, Mobile Legends, PUBG Mobile and Garena Free Fire are 1st, 2nd and 3rd for usage penetration in the games category across Indonesia (most recent week as of July 20) according to App Annie

Opensignal uses a basket of different games to represent the experience of different genres. We test to a variety of typical game server locations but cannot reflect every specific game’s configuration. The precise games that are popular in each genre vary over time but Opensignal has designed the Games Experience measure to reflect the typical experience. For Battle Royale games we have focused on games with 100 player arenas, rather than games with smaller arena sizes that are less demanding on smartphone hardware or network capabilities.

We saw a fierce competition between two operators — 3 and Telkomsel — in our measurements, but 3 won our award with a score of 65.6, the only operator to achieve a Fair rating (65-75). Telkomsel was close behind, separated by less than 1.5 points (64.1) to finish second, while XL and Indosat were significantly behind with scores of 51.8 and 45.3, respectively. Smartfren ended with a Very Poor rating (less than 40) with a score of 38.9.

A Fair rating means most users deemed the experience “average”; it also indicates that the gameplay experience was generally controllable, with the majority of users noticing a delay between their actions and the outcomes in the game. And as we descend down the ratings the experience becomes less enjoyable, marred with increased delays and lack of controllability in gameplay.

Our users perceived the best Voice App Experience on Telkomsel’s network. The operator won our award in this category for the second time in a row, and maintained an Acceptable rating with a score of 78.4 (out of 100) — an increase of 1.1 points since the last report. In second place, with a score of 76.1, 3 also joined Telkomsel in the Acceptable rating category (74-80). We recorded the highest increase on its network, as the operator boosted its score by 2.4 points to cut Telkomsel’s lead from 4 points to 2.3 points. An Acceptable rating means users are satisfied and generally able to comprehend without repetition during their calls, while some may experience perceptible call quality impairments.

Indosat also improved its score by 2.1 points to score 70.5, and ended up in a dead-heat with XL. However, with scores between 66-74, all three operators, including Smartfren (67), remained in the Poor rating category (66-74). A Poor rating signifies that many users were dissatisfied and suffered call quality impairments such as distortion, clicking sounds or silence.

The download speeds Indonesian users experience on a day-to-day basis continue to rise on a majority of networks. The Download Speed Experience scores of four out of five national operators, with Smartfren being the exception, increased since our last report, but no individual gain from Indosat, XL or 3 was enough to catch up with the category leader Telkomsel. Our Tekomsel users, on average, experienced the fastest download speeds of 13.1 Mbps in Indonesia. Its winning score was 3.8 Mbps faster than that of its nearest rival XL and more than three times that of last-placed Smartfren in our measurements.

Our users on Telkomsel saw their average download speeds grow by 1 Mbps, their Indosat counterparts saw the highest improvement of 1.9 Mbps, followed by users on 3 and XL who saw their speeds grow by 0.7 Mbps and 0.6 Mbps respectively.

When we broke out speeds by technology type, we saw a similar picture in the 4G Download Speed scores: Telkomsel had the highest score — 14.8 Mbps — leaving XL behind with 10.7 Mbps, followed by Indosat, 3 and Smartfren with scores of 9.4 Mbps, 7.9Mbps, and 4.3 Mbps, respectively.

However, we saw a fierce competition in Upload Speed Experience. Telkomsel held on to our award with a score of 5.1 Mbps, while XL came close to challenge our winner with a score of 4.9 Mbps. At the same time, 3 and Indosat trailed closely behind, statistically tied, with scores just below 4.5 Mbps. By contrast, the gap between Smartfren and the rest of the operators was much larger, as the former’s score was just above 1 Mbps.

Upload speeds are typically slower than download speeds, as current mobile broadband technologies tend to be focused on providing the best possible downstream rates for users consuming content. But the increasing use of social media and content sharing shows that mobile users are not just consuming content but are also creating it. This means that upload speeds are becoming an increasingly important aspect of the mobile network experience.

4G access in Indonesia keeps getting better. Smartfren held on to our 4G Availability award with a commendable score of 97.4%. But all four of its rivals have been making big strides to close the gap with Smartfren since our last report. While 3’s 4G Availability score grew by 1.8 percentage points to reach an impressive score of 92.6%, our users saw the highest growth of 4.4 percentage points on Indosat’s network, which pushed its scores beyond the 90% bar. This is also one of the reasons we are seeing great improvement in Indosat’s scores in other metrics. As operators make their 4G services more accessible, consumers can find faster 4G connections more often, which causes overall mobile network experience to improve.

Telkomsel also reached the 90% mark as its score improved by 3.3 percentage points — which is remarkable given its relatively high user base spread across the archipelagic geography — while XL’s score grew by 1.7 percentage points to finish with a score of 88.8%. This means that 4G users on four out of five networks in Indonesia, on average, are now able to connect to 4G services at least 90% of the time.

Telkomsel also won our 4G Coverage Experience award with the highest score of 8.1 points (on a 10-point scale), followed by XL and Indosat’s scores of 6.0 and 5.8 respectively, while Smartfren and 3 were further away — both had scores below 5 points. Given the unevenly distributed population density in the archipelago, with most populated centres in and around Java, this metric is an important measurement in Indonesia. A score of 8.1 shows that Telkomsel's users can find a 4G signal in significantly more locations than our users on other operators.

Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience metric is a measure of how our mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator’s network. Measured on a scale of 0-10, it analyzes the locations where customers of a network operator received a 4G signal relative to the locations visited by Opensignal users of all network operators.