Malaysia

Maxis continues to lead Video Experience in Malaysia. The operator won our Video Experience award with a score of 60 points (on a scale of 0-100) — a decline of 7.5 points, since our last report, that placed Maxis in the Good category. Our users on Celcom also reported a decline of 3.2 points, while their DiGi counterparts saw an improvement of 1.4 points. As a result, Digi moved up to second place in Video Experience with a score of 58.9 points, and also showed the highest 4G Video Experience of 66 points. On the other hand, U Mobile beat Unifi with a boost of 7.2 points in their Video Experience score, which tipped U Mobile over the Fair rating threshold. Unifi finished in last place with a score of 44.2 points.

Opensignal’s Video Experience metric quantifies video streaming quality by measuring real-world video streams across a range of content delivery networks, using dedicated video streaming tests, to reflect the true experience of users over an operator’s mobile network. The metric calculation takes picture quality, video loading time and stall rate into account. A Good rating indicates that our users enjoyed an acceptable experience when streaming mobile video at lower resolutions, but loading times could still be slow and stalling was not uncommon, especially at higher resolutions. And as we descend to the Fair rating, loading times get longer and users will encounter more stops and stutters in video streams, most notably at higher resolutions.

Maxis came out on top and won the Opensignal Games Experience award with a score of 55.3 out of a possible 100, ahead of Unifi in second place by 3.9 points. Celcom and DiGi followed closely behind, statistically tied with scores just above 50 points, while U Mobile was just one point shy of the 50-point mark.

Measured on a scale of 0-100, Opensignal’s Games Experience metric quantifies the experience when playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on mobile devices connected to servers located around the world. The approach is built on several years of research quantifying the relationship between technical network parameters and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users. These parameters include latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (the proportion of data packets that never reach their destination). Additionally, it considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions. The games tested include some of the most popular real-time multiplayer mobile games (such as Fortnite, Pro Evolution Soccer and Arena of Valor) played around the world.

Our users saw modest declines in our Voice App Experience scores on four out of five networks compared to our previous report of between 1.3 and 2.8 points. Only our U Mobile users saw a tiny improvement of less than a point, as a consequence of which U Mobile and Unifi statistically tied for our Voice App Experience award with Acceptable ratings. We saw fierce competition for this award, with less than 2.3 points (out of 100) separating all five operators. While DiGi and Maxis missed the top spot by less than a point, with scores below 74 points both the operators placed in the Poor rating category along with Celcom.

An Acceptable rating means users were satisfied with the quality of the call and were generally able to comprehend without repetition, while some may have suffered from perceptible call quality impairments such as clicking sounds or distortion. Likewise, a Poor rating means many users were dissatisfied and likely suffered from increased call quality impairments.

Our Voice App Experience metric quantifies the quality of consumers’ experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services using apps like WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger over mobile networks. It ranks operators on a scale of 0-100 using a mean opinion score (MOS) model derived from an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) based approach for quantifying overall voice call quality and a series of calibrated technical parameters such as UDP latency and UDP packet-loss.

In the past six months, the average download speed of our Malaysian users has also declined on the majority of operators. Maxis has comfortably retained our Download Speed Experience award with a score of 14.5 Mbps, despite our users reporting the largest decline of 5.9 Mbps or 29.1%, on average, on its network. However, its lead shrunk, with just about 4 Mbps separating it from second-placed DiGi (10.6 Mbps), compared with the lead of 7.7 Mbps (60.8%) it commanded over Celcom’s score in our previous report. The average download speeds experienced by our Celcom users (10.2 Mbps) also declined by 2.5 Mbps, followed by their DiGi and Unifi counterparts who saw their speeds decline by 1 Mbps (9%) and 0.3 Mbps (4.3%) respectively. Meanwhile, our U Mobile users saw their average download speeds grow by 2.7 Mbps to 10.1 Mbps — almost 3.5 Mbps higher than last-placed Unifi.

When we look at Download Speed Experience split by network type, in 4G Download Speed Experience our users on Maxis saw the fastest average download speeds of 16.9 Mbs, while those on Digi, U Mobile and Celcom were below the 15 Mbps mark with scores of 12.9 Mbps, 12.2 Mbps and 11.3 Mbps, respectively. Meanwhile, the 3G Download Speed Experience of our users was closely matched when connected to Maxis, Celcom, DiGi and U Mobile with speeds averaging just above 2.5 Mbps.

In our last report, we saw Maxis won our Upload Speed Experience award. But in the last six months, Maxis’s score dipped slightly by 1.9 Mbps, while U Mobile’s score grew by 0.5 Mbps. As a consequence of this, U Mobile users now enjoy the fastest Upload Speed Experience in Malaysia. Meanwhile, Celcom and Unifi users also saw their average upload speeds deteriorate by 1.6 Mbps and 0.4 Mbps, respectively.

While download speeds get the most attention, upload speed is becoming increasingly important as consumer mobile habits shift away from mere content consumption to its creation and content sharing on popular social media platforms, which gives operators with the fastest upload speeds a distinct advantage.

When it comes to the level of 4G access, Celcom remains the operator to beat. Our 4G users on its networks were able to find a 4G connection 88.1% of the time. Maxis was second-placed with a score of 85.7%. While Unifi’s 4G Availability was less than a point shy from the 85% mark, DiGi and U Mobile were further below with 81.6% and 80.9% respectively.

In the past six months, the 4G Availability experienced by our Celcom, Maxis and DiGi users has dipped by 1.5 to 0.1 percentage points, compared to their counterparts on U Mobile and Unifi who reported growth of 3.4 and 0.7 percentage points in their 4G Availability respectively.

The crisis has shifted people’s behavior, one of these is the change in location of mobile usage. Governments in many countries including Malaysia have been asking their citizens to remain in their homes. This indicates that users are spending more time in locations where operators may have not designed network infrastructure to suit the new traffic pattern.

Celcom also won our 4G Coverage Experience award, with a score of 8.8 points (on a scale of 0-10). Maxis and Digi were tied in second place with 8.1 points, while Unifi and U Mobile were further away with 6.7 and 6.9 points respectively. Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience is a measure of how mobile subscribers experience 4G coverage on an operator’s network.