Thailand

TrueMove H continues to impress in terms of Video Experience, having now won the award on three consecutive occasions. This time, it won with a score of 61.2 out of 100, 0.9 points (1.4%) ahead of second placed DTAC’s score of 60.3. AIS came third with a score of 57.5. Our users on all three operators’ networks saw modest declines in their Video Experience, with scores dropping by 0.2-1.0 points depending on their choice of operator.

All three operators continued to place in the Good (55-65) category for this measure of the mobile experience. A Good rating means that our users enjoyed an acceptable experience when streaming mobile video at lower resolutions, but loading times may have been slow and stalling may have occurred, especially at higher resolutions.

As was the case in the previous report, our users observed a Very Good (65-75) 4G Video Experience when connected to TrueMove H and DTAC’s 4G networks; while seeing only a Good one on AIS’s 4G network. In addition, AIS has slipped down a category in terms of 3G Video Experience — from Fair (40-55) to Poor (under 40) — putting it in the same category as DTAC and leaving TrueMove H as the sole Thai operator with a Fair rating for 3G Video Experience.

Opensignal’s Video Experience metric quantifies the quality of video streamed to mobile devices by measuring real-world video streams over an operator's networks. The metric is derived on an International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-based approach, built upon detailed studies which have derived a relationship between technical parameters, including picture quality, video loading time and stall rate, with the perceived video experience as reported by real people. To calculate video experience, we are directly measuring video streams from end-user devices and using this ITU approach to quantify the overall video experience for each operator on a scale from 0 to 100. The videos tested include a mixture of resolutions and are streamed directly from the world’s largest video content providers.

AIS has now won our Games Experience award in two reports in a row. Its latest score — 69 points — is an impressive 9.8 points (16.6%) above that of second-placed DTAC. AIS’s margin of victory has risen by 2.6 points (or 5.9 percentage points) since our last report, despite declines across all three operators’ scores. In addition, AIS has remained in the Fair (65-75) category, while DTAC — which also had a Fair rating in our previous report — has joined TrueMove H in the Poor category (40-65). However, not everything has gone AIS’s way — it dropped down a category for 4G Games Experience — from Good to Fair and when we analyzed the 3G Games Experience, our users on its network saw their average score drop by 9.6 points (18.5%), while their counterparts on TrueMove H and DTAC saw drops of 2.2 points (5.7%) and 2.9 points (6.9%), respectively.

The Games Experience metric quantifies the experience when playing real-time multiplayer 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. 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, Garena Freefire, and PUBG — played around the world.

AIS’s lead over its peers on Voice App Experience has increased slightly since our last report, rising by 0.4 points to 3.2 points (4.3%) above second-placed DTAC’s score of 74.1 points out of 100. AIS has now held the Voice App Experience award across three consecutive reports, having won it ever since we first awarded it in Thailand this time last year. Our users have observed small declines in their experience across all three operators — in the 2-2.4 point range — since our last report. While our TrueMove H users saw a drop of 2.2 points, this was enough for the operator to drop down a category — from Acceptable (74-80) to Poor (66-74) — and break ranks with its peers who held onto their Acceptable Voice App Experience ratings.

An Acceptable rating means that our users were generally able to comprehend without repetition, although perceptible call quality impairments may have been experienced by some users, such as clicking sounds of short duration or distortion and/or the volume may not have been sufficiently loud. A Poor rating indicates that many users were dissatisfied and experienced call quality impairments experienced that were perceptible and may have been annoying.

While all three operators remain in the Poor category for 3G Voice App Experience, AIS was the only operator to place one category lower for 4G Voice App Experience, falling from Good (80-87) to Acceptable (74-80), though our users on all three operators’ 4G networks observed declines of 1.7-2.2 points and our AIS users observed the smallest drop in their score for this submetric.

Opensignal's Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, LINE, Skype, Facebook Messenger, etc. — using a model derived from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)-based approach for quantifying overall voice call quality and a series of calibrated technical parameters. This model characterizes the exact relationship between the technical measurements and perceived call quality.

DTAC has won our Download Speed Experience award for two reports in a row, after breaking a statistical tie between it and TrueMove H in our last report. However, while its lead has increased slightly since then, from 0.7 Mbps (7.8%) to 0.8 Mbps (8.6%), this is not insurmountable should one of its rivals decide to make a strong push in this regard and/or quickly ramp up both its 5G network rollout and the proportion of its users with 5G handsets. While our TrueMove H and DTAC users observed increases of 0.4 Mbps (4.5%) and 0.3 Mbps (2.9%), respectively, our AIS users saw their overall average download speeds fall by 0.2 Mbps (2.4%).

Interestingly, when we split our users’ Download Speed Experience by mobile network technology generation, TrueMove H and DTAC users saw increases of 0.8 and 0.6 Mbps in their 4G Download Speed scores, while our AIS users’ average 4G speeds were essentially unchanged from our last report. Turning to our users’ 3G Download Speed scores, they have fallen since our previous report across all three operators, with our AIS and TrueMove H users observing declines of 0.4 Mbps — a drop of 12.4% for AIS, but only 7.4% for TrueMove H — while DTAC’s 3G Download Speed score fell by just 0.1 Mbps (2.6%).

TrueMove H continues to hold onto our Upload Speed Experience award, which it has held since our May 2019 report. The operator’s lead over second-placed AIS has dropped by 0.2 Mbps to 1.3 Mbps, but it is still impressive in percentage terms, as TrueMove H’s new score is 24.5% higher than that of AIS. Our users across all three operators have observed declines in their average overall upload speeds since our last report, but these drops varied from the 0.1 Mbps (3.3%) seen by our DTAC users to the 0.6 Mbps (8.1%) witnessed by their TrueMove H counterparts. The drops in our users’ 4G Upload Speed scores were close to those for average overall upload speeds but were slightly smaller in percentage terms, ranging from the fall of 1.9% seen by our DTAC users to the decline of 5.9% that was observed by our TrueMove H users.

While all three operator’s 4G Availability scores have fallen since our last report, pushing TrueMove H below the 90% mark, our users on two out of three operators still spent more than 90% of their time connected to 4G services. AIS continues to hold the 4G Availability award and has done so since our November 2018 report. The operator’s lead has risen slightly since our last report — from the 2.6 percentage points observed last time to at least 3.2 percentage points. The falls in the proportion of time our users spent connected to 4G ranged between 1.5 percentage points — in the case of our AIS users — to the drop of 2 percentage points seen by our DTAC users.

AIS has once again won our 4G Coverage Experience award, having picked up the award when we launched it in Thailand in our previous report. The operator’s hold on this measure of the mobile experience is essentially unchanged since our last report as the gap between its score and that of second-placed TrueMove H is still 0.6 points. All three operator’s scores have risen by 0.3 points, resulting in scores of 8.8, 8.2 and 6.7 for AIS, TrueMove H and DTAC, respectively.

Opensignal’s 4G Coverage Experience metric is a measure of how 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 users of all network operators.

In simple terms,4G Coverage Experience measures the mobile coverage experience in all the locations that matter most to everyday users — i.e.all the places where they live, work and travel. It considers all the areas that Opensignal users visit, the portion of locations that 4G is available to them, and locations that more users visit have higher importance to them.