Singapore's established telcos continue to increase 4G upload and download speeds

According to a survey carried out by Opensignal over a three month period from August to the end of October this year, subscribers to Singtel, Starhub and M1, three main telcos in Singapore will be happy that despite not having 5G yet, their service providers are working to improve their 4G experience.

Opensignal took some 71 million measurements from 54,443 devices during the survey.

4G Availability metric

Opensignal uses 4G Availability as a bellwether for the mobile network experience because of 4G technology's inherent speed, capacity, and latency advantages over 3G. The more time users spend connected to 4G, the better their overall experience is likely to be.

According to the report, in the last six months, M1 and StarHub users' have broken through the 90 per cent mark for 4G Availability joining Singtel, which was the first Singaporean operator to achieve this last time.

Video experience

Opensignal said that users on all three operators are enjoying an Excellent Video Experience, with scores of 78.2, 77.5 and 76.6 for M1, Singtel and StarHub respectively. Yet, for overall Video Experience, only users on M1 enjoyed an Excellent experience.

Latency Experience

The responsiveness of a network - or latency - is a critical measure that increases the feeling of speed in many online services. A network with moderate speed, but excellent latency, may offer its users a faster feeling web browsing experience than a rival with faster download speeds! For gamers in particular, latency or "ping time" is a measure which is often displayed in-game because it can make the difference not only between an enjoyable or frustrating online gaming experience but between winning and losing.

M1 won Opensignal's Latency Experience award, with a latency of just 26.6ms, meaning M1 users see the most responsive mobile network experience, ahead of second-placed Singtel. Again, StarHub users have the slowest latency, but it has improved and for the first time joins its competitors with a latency of below the 30ms mark.

Looking ahead to 5G

2020 looks to be the year when Singapore telcos deliver on their 5G promises.

Processor and smartphone manufacturers are already lining up products and solutions to meet expected market demand. The Singapore Government is also showing its support for 5G based solutions. Even networking vendors are jumping on board the 5G bandwagon.

Opensignal says that with 5G technologies aiming to deliver even more responsive networks in the years ahead, Singapore's operators ongoing latency improvements are creating an excellent foundation on which to build when 5G launches here.

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.