State-owned mobile telecommunications company Telkomsel raced ahead of all its private competitors in a newly released study ranking five major Indonesian mobile networks, only falling short in one connectivity metric.
The study, conducted by UK-based independent wireless connectivity analysts Opensignal, put Telkomsel on top in terms of speed metrics nationally. For download speeds, Telkomsel averaged 9.8 mbps followed by XL with 7.4 mbps. The top two are also the same for upload speeds, with Telkomsel averaging 3.7 mbps and XL 3.4 mbps.
Telkomsel also came out on top in the video experience category, which measures load times and rate of buffering at different resolutions, scoring 54.3 points from a possible 100. However, the study noted that Telkomsel’s score is not satisfactory in a global context, let alone its competitors’ lower scores.
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The only category in the study that Telkomsel did not come out on top was 4G availability, which shows the proportion of time users with 4G-capable devices and subscriptions receive 4G connection. Smartfren topped the list in this category with 95.8% — not surprising since it shut down its 3G network to focus on 4G in late 2017 — while Hutchinson Tri (3) came second with 88.6% and Telkomsel last with 80.9%.
Despite Telkomsel’s almost clean sweep nationally, the study noted that its average upload speed dropped by 1 mbps in the last six months, while Indosat, XL and Smartfren increased theirs by 0.5 mbps. Smartfren, too, had a substantial 1.8 mbps drop in download speed since Opensignal’s last report in June 2018, putting it out of the top spot this year.
In Jakarta, Telkomsel wins in almost all of the categories, including download speed (12.8 mbps), upload speed (4.7 mbps) and video experience (61.8) but lost to XL for 4G availability (96.4%).
Opensignal carried out their study of Indonesia’s mobile network in 16 major cities, including Jakarta, Medan, and Bandung, in which they analyzed 3.3 million devices from February 1 to May 1, 2019.
You can read the full study here.
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