KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia continues to lead Southeast Asia in terms of 5G network performance, with the country’s 5G median download speed at 451.79Mbps, which is higher than that for Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, according to Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence report.
Ookla, a global leader in connectivity intelligence, said Singapore’s 5G median download speed stood at 329.73Mbps, Thailand’s at 129.40Mbps and the Philippines’ at 125.14Mbps.
The report said Malaysia’s 5G network scored the highest consistency score globally for the fourth quarter of 2023 (Q4 2023) at 97.3%.
“The result indicates that 97.3% of Speedtest Intelligence samples on Malaysia’s 5G networks exceeded the consistency threshold, which is currently set at a minimum download speed of 25Mbps and a minimum upload speed of 3Mbps,” it said in its Q4 2023 Speedtest Intelligence report.
In comparison, other top countries such as North Macedonia and the United Arab Emirates reported lower consistency scores of 94.1% and 93.9%, respectively.
In terms of 5G availability, Ookla, which specialises in internet speed testing and analysis, said the 5G availability in Malaysia had increased to 27.0% in Q4 2023 from 21.0% in Q1.
Malaysia has adopted an approach to its 5G roll-out by implementing a single wholesale network model through the formation of Digital Nasional Bhd in 2021.
“Since its launch more than two years ago, Malaysia’s 5G network has consistently performed well, making it one of the best-performing 5G networks worldwide,” it said.
The report also noted that all states in Malaysia had experienced at least a 1.45 times increase in their overall mobile speeds across all technologies.
“Malaysia’s government administrative city of Putrajaya emerged as having the fastest mobile median download speeds in the country at 190.86Mbps, an increase of more than 2.5 times compared to Q4 2022, which was at 61.24Mbps,” it said.
Nevertheless, despite the increase, Malaysia is still lagging behind its neighbours, such as Singapore and Thailand, which have 53.8% and 45.5% 5G availability, respectively, slightly higher than the Philippines at 26.2%, it noted. – March 18, 2024