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Taiwan Mobile has lost its grip on our Games Experience award as it has gone from being the sole winner in our last report, to one of three joint winners alongside FarEasTone and Chunghwa. Opensignal’s Games Experience is a measure of how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network. Measured on a scale of 0-100, it analyzes how the multiplayer mobile gaming experience is affected by mobile network conditions including latency, packet loss and jitter.
Last time round, Chunghwa commanded a seemingly unassailable lead in terms of the average download speeds observed by our users, with a Download Speed Experience score that was 8.7 Mbps higher than that of second-placed FarEasTone. This time, Chunghwa’s lead has dropped by 3.9 Mbps to a far more modest — but still impressive — 4.9 Mbps. The main factor behind this decline was a remarkable 6.5 Mbps (21.9%) increase in the average download speeds seen by our FarEasTone users, which outweighed the 2.7 Mbps (6.9%) improvement seen by their Chunghwa counterparts.
While Chunghwa is still the outright winner of our Video Experience award, there have been some interesting developments further down the table. Our GT users have seen their Video Experience improve by 4.1 points (6.5%) since our previous report, which has moved the operator up a category from Good (55-65) to Very Good (65-75). In addition, while FarEasTone’s score rose by only 0.3 points, this was enough to push it into the Excellent (75 or above) category for this measure of the mobile experience.
While our users across all five operators spent less of their time connected to 4G services in this reporting period, our GT users saw the smallest decline, with the operator’s score dropping by just 0.1 of a percentage point. This allowed it to draw level with last report’s joint winners of the 4G Availability award — FarEasTone and Taiwan Mobile. As a result, all three operators share this award, with their scores being statistically tied.
Taiwan continues to be blessed with a highly competitive mobile market, as far as our users’ mobile experience is concerned. While Chunghwa has the strongest hold on our awards table by virtue of its three outright wins — Video Experience, Download Speed Experience and 4G Coverage Experience — two of our awards — Games Experience and 4G Availability — are held jointly by three operators and FarEasTone and Taiwan Mobile are joint winners for Voice App Experience. In addition, FarEasTone has now won our Upload Speed Experience award outright for three reports in a row and has nearly halved Chunghwa’s lead on Download Speed Experience.
The Taiwanese mobile experience is also impressive by international standards. In our recent Global Mobile Network Experience Awards 2020 report, FarEasTone was judged a Global Leader for Voice App Experience and it together with Chunghwa, Taiwan Mobile and GT notched up 13 Global High Performer accolades between them across five of our measures of the mobile experience.
Much has happened in the Taiwanese mobile market since our June report, with Chunghwa and Taiwan Mobile going live with their 5G networks on 30 June and 1 July, respectively. FarEasTone and T Star weren’t far behind, with their 5G launches taking place on 3 July and early August, respectively. GT caught up with its peers on 23 October, when it launched its own 5G service via a spectrum sharing agreement with FarEasTone and the use of mmWave spectrum.
In this report, we’ve analyzed the mobile network experience of our Taiwanese users across the island’s five national operators — Chunghwa, FarEasTone, GT, Taiwan Mobile and T Star — over the 90 day period beginning 1 August. Our results include measurements from 5G devices.
| Mobile Experience Awards Taiwan | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
December 2020,
Taiwan Report
|
G
GT
|
F
FarEasTone
|
C
Chunghwa
|
T
Taiwan Mobile
|
T
T Star
|
Video Experience
| |||||
Games Experience
| |||||
Voice App Experience
| |||||
Download Speed Experience
| |||||
Upload Speed Experience
| |||||
4G Availability
| |||||
4G Coverage Experience
| |||||
|
Mobile Experience Awards Winners
|
December 2020,
Taiwan
|
|---|---|
|
Video Experience
|
C
Chunghwa
|
|
Download Speed Experience
|
C
Chunghwa
|
|
Upload Speed Experience
|
F
FarEasTone
|
|
4G Coverage Experience
|
C
Chunghwa
|
|
Mobile Experience Awards Draws
|
December 2020, Taiwan
|
|---|---|
|
Games Experience
|
F
FarEasTone
C
Chunghwa
T
Taiwan Mobile
|
|
Voice App Experience
|
F
FarEasTone
T
Taiwan Mobile
|
|
4G Availability
|
G
GT
F
FarEasTone
T
Taiwan Mobile
|
Chunghwa has now won our Video Experience award for four reports in a row. However, its lead has dropped from our last report, from at least 1.4 points to 0.8 points. In addition, FarEasTone is now clearly in second place after previously statistically tying with Taiwan Mobile. FarEasTone was also one of the three operators that have seen their scores improve since our previous report, with the others being GT and T Star. FarEasTone’s score rose by 0.3 points and this was enough to move it into the Excellent (75 or above) category. Our GT users saw more improvement, with its score rising by 4.1 points (6.5%), which moved it from Good (55-65) to Very Good (65-75). As a consequence, our Taiwanese users observed at least a Very Good Video Experience across all five operators.
T Star’s score is up 2.2 points from our last report, but it remains in the Very Good category for this measure of the mobile experience. Meanwhile Taiwan Mobile and Chunghwa’s scores fell by 1.4 and 0.8 points respectively, which pushed the former down a category — from Excellent to Very Good.
An Excellent Video Experience indicates a very consistent experience across all users, video streaming providers and resolutions tested, with fast loading times and almost non-existent stalling. A Very Good rating on the other hand, means that loading times were generally fast and that there was only occasional stalling but the experience might have been somewhat inconsistent across users and/or video providers/resolutions.
Taiwan Mobile has lost its grip on our Games Experience award as it has gone from being the sole winner in our last report, to one of three joint winners alongside FarEasTone and Chunghwa.
Games Experience 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 game genres tested include those with some of the most popular real-time multiplayer mobile games — such as Fortnite, Arena of Valor, and PUBG — played around the world.
Chunghwa has fallen out of contention for the Voice App Experience award as the three-way tie between it, FarEasTone and Taiwan Mobile that our users saw in our last report has narrowed to a two-way statistical tie between the latter two operators. This change was driven by the fact that although all five operators’ Voice App Experience scores have declined, Chunghwa’s score fell the most — a modest drop of 1.3 points. However, the only movement in category terms was seen by our T Star users, as the operator dropped down a place from Good (80-87) to Acceptable (74-80) thanks to a 0.8 point fall in its score for this measure of the mobile experience.
A Good Voice App Experience means that many users were satisfied although some may have experienced minor quality impairments such as clicking sounds or distortion. An Average rating indicates that less users were satisfied, but listeners were generally able to hear without the need for repetition.
Opensignal's Voice App Experience measures the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, 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. Voice App Experience for each operator is calculated on a scale from 0 to 100.
Chunghwa has won our Download Speed Experience award outright ever since our July 2018 report and its winning streak has continued in this report. However, the incredible 8.7 Mbps lead that it commanded over second-placed FarEasTone in our last report has nearly halved — dropping by 3.9 Mbps to a far more modest — but still impressive — 4.9 Mbps. This change was driven by a 6.5 Mbps (21.9%) increase in the average download speeds seen by our FarEasTone users to reach 36.3 Mbps. This outweighed the 2.7 Mbps (6.9%) improvement seen by their Chunghwa counterparts. However, this improvement pushed Chunghwa over the 40 Mbps mark for this measure of the mobile experience
>Looking further down the table, our T Star users have seen an impressive jump in their average download speeds, with the operator’s score rising by 3.1 Mbps (15.4%) to hit 23.5 Mbps. In contrast, Taiwan Mobile’s Download Speed Experience score increased by just 0.8 Mbps (2.8%), while GT’s declined by 0.5 Mbps (3%).
This is now the third time in a row that FarEasTone has won our Upload Speed Experience award outright. This time it did so by a margin of at least 1.6 Mbps, up from the 0.9 Mbps or more seen in our previous report. The average upload speeds seen by our FarEasTone users rose by a modest 0.2 Mbps (1.6%) to 11.8 Mbps. The only other operator to see its score rise since the previous reporting period was T Star. Our users on its network saw their average upload speeds rise by a solid 0.4 Mbps (5.7%). Taiwan’s other three national operators saw their scores for this measure of the mobile experience decline by 0.1-0.5 Mbps (2.1-4.8%), with our Chunghwa users seeing the largest decline in their Upload Speed Experience and their counterparts on GT the least.
FarEasTone, GT and Taiwan Mobile are joint winners for our 4G Availability award. Of these three, FarEasTone and Taiwan Mobile were tied for the award in our previous two reports, with the latter being the last operator to win the award outright back in our June 2019 report. GT was able to force a three-way statistical tie as while all five operators’ scores for this measure of the mobile experience have fallen since our last report, our GT users saw the smallest decline, with the operator’s score dropping by just 0.1 of a percentage point.
Its rivals saw their 4G Availability scores drop by 0.5-1.1 percentage points, with the largest decline being observed by our Taiwan Mobile users.
This is the third consecutive report in which Chunghwa has won our 4G Coverage Experience award with a score of 9.8 — only 0.2 points shy of a perfect score. In addition, as was the case in our previous report, FarEasTone and Taiwan Mobile are statistically tied for second place. Out of Taiwan’s five national operators, three saw their 4G Coverage Experience scores rise by 0.1 points — FarEasTone, GT, and T Star.
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.
The competition over our city-level awards was fierce. Across seven cities and with up to 42 awards for the taking, the highest number of outright wins by a single operator (Chunghwa) was just five — the operator picked up four awards for Download Speed Experience and another one for Video Experience in Taoyuan, while also being a joint winner for 25 awards. FarEasTone picked up the next largest haul of outright wins, with three in Upload Speed Experience. However, the operator also picked up an impressive 32 joint wins at the city-level, including ties across all seven cities for Voice App Experience. Like Chunghwa, it also tied in six cities for both Video Experience and Games Experience.
Turning to Download Speed Experience, our Chunghwa users observed average download speeds of more than 40 Mbps in five out of seven cities, with its score in Taichung missing the mark by just 0.1 point. Despite Chunghwa racking up speeds in excess of 43 Mbps in both Taipei and New Taipei, FarEasTone statistically tied with it in both cities with scores of 42 Mbps and 43.6 Mbps respectively. FarEasTone’s scores in the other cities ranged from the 37.4 Mbps reported by our users on its network in Taichung to 28.7 Mbps in Tainan. Our Taiwan Mobile users saw average download speeds above 30 Mbps in three cities: Taipei, New Taipei and Hsinchu City, with Taichung missing the mark by around 0.1 points.
FarEasTone, the winner of our national Upload Speed Experience award also dominated at the city-level on this measure of the mobile experience, notching up three outright wins in New Taipei, Taipei and Taoyuan and being a joint winner alongside Chunghwa in the remaining four cities, In addition, our users on its network clocked up the fastest average upload speeds across all seven cities and five operators in Taipei, with a score of 13.8 Mbps.
Our Chunghwa users observed an Excellent Video Experience in six out of seven cities with the exception being Kaohsiung where they had a Very Good Video Experience. FarEasTone was not far off, with Excellent ratings in four cities — Hsinchu City, New Taipei, Taichung and Taipei. Our users on the other operators’ networks (GT, Taiwan Mobile and T Star) mostly observed a Very Good Video Experience, though our T Star and Taiwan Mobile users observed an Excellent one in Taipei and our GT users had only a Good Video Experience in Kaohsiung.
As far as Games Experience is concerned, there was only a single outright win at the city-level, with Taiwan Mobile being the sole winner in Kaohsiung. Chunghwa and FarEasTone both racked up six joint wins, while Taiwan Mobile has five.
There were no outright wins at the city-level for Voice App Experience, with FarEasTone and Taiwan Mobile claiming seven joint wins apiece and Chunghwa picking up five joint wins. Only our FarEasTone and Taiwan Mobile users observed a Good Voice App Experience in all seven cities — Chunghwa managed six, with our users on its network in Tainan reporting an Acceptable experience instead.
Finally, no operator succeeded in winning a 4G Availability award at the city-level outright. Both FarEasTone and GT racked up six joint wins apiece, with Taiwan Mobile netting a further five. All three operators’ scores across all seven cities were 95% or higher, with FarEasTone and GT scoring above 97% in Hsinchu City and GT achieving the same in Taoyuan.
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