Today’s 4G networks suffer from huge fluctuations in speed throughout the day. Depending on the country, the 4G download speed users experience per hour could be as much as 30 Mbps faster than speed experience just a few hours later. 5G is believed to help iron out these inconsistencies, as it will provide a solid bedrock of capacity that will relieve congestion during the busiest hours.
Opensignal, a mobile analytics company, has released its report, “The 5G Opportunity: How 5G will solve the congestion problems of today’s 4G networks”. The report analyses the level of traffic congestion on current 4G networks globally and explores how 5G will add new capabilities to help to solve the congestion and speed variations.
Key findings from APAC include:
- Asia Pacific showed the greatest differences in download experience, with most countries either positioned at the top or bottom of Opensignal’s speed consistency measures
-
- Users experience average speeds above 40 Mbps in South Korea (47.1 Mbps) and Singapore (45.4 Mbps), while struggle to even reach double digits in India (6.5 Mbps), Thailand (8.2 Mbps), Indonesia (8.6 Mbps), Cambodia (8.6 Mbps) and Philippines (9.4 Mbps)
- 60% countries in the APAC region had users experience slowest speeds at peak hours
-
- When the network is most congested, Malaysian users experienced 9 Mbps in 4G download speed, ahead of Philippines (6.9 Mbps), Thailand (6 Mbps), Indonesia (5.7 Mbps), Cambodia (3.7 Mbps) and India (3.7 Mbps). Taiwan, on the other hand, hit the records as the country globally with the largest decrease in speed at peak hour, reaching 9.3 Mbps lower than the average speed
- India and Thailand struggled to rise from the bottom of most of speed consistency measures
-
- Although average speed in Thailand (8.2 Mbps) was faster than India (6.5 Mbps) and users in the former experienced 2.2 Mbps better speed at peak hours, Indian users experienced a comeback at non-peak hours with higher speeds of 2.8 Mbps than their peers in Thailand. Therefore, India’s networks proved that they were capable of supporting much faster connections, but they could only do so with fewer users online
- At off-peak hours, South Korea, Singapore and Australia have networks capable of delivering more than 50 Mbps in 4G download speed, but while Singapore and South Korea consistently delivered speeds faster than 40 Mbps, Australia only delivered 31.5 Mbps at its peak hours. So, while all three countries clearly had very powerful networks, South Korea and Singapore had an edge on Australia in consistency.
