nPerf Reveals Fastest Mobile Internet Service Provider in Malaysia
4 min read
Once in a while in the digital age, users will ponder upon the question of which internet provider in Malaysia has the fastest internet connection. Where it be download or upload speeds, every bit of speed is crucial in this fast-paced world.
From 1st July 2018 to 30th June 2019, a study was conducted by nPerf, an internet speed measuring program and the results are as follows.
While Maxis is the champion in the speeds and Celcom in second place, the final score shows Digi taking second place with Maxis still taking the crown. This is due to the average score taken when the data of 2G, 3G, and 4G are factored in.
nPerf conducted their study on success rates, download speeds, upload speeds, latency, streaming and browsing tests. The data amount and distribution of the service provider is almost the same at roughly in the 20% range.
Success Rates
Success rates is the number of successful tests against the number of tests performed. Based on the bar graph, all of the internet service providers with the exception of U-Mobile are neck in neck with each other on this differentiating in values of 1-2% which are fairly negligible differences in terms of reliability. Overall, Unifi has the best success rates with U-Mobile having the worst.
Download Speeds
Maxis came up on top as the fastest internet provider for the whole year at an average of 19.81Mbps download speed and 8.84Mbps upload speed with Celcom(16.58Mbps) not far behind. The result also shows Digi’s download and upload speeds not far behind Celcom at 14.19Mbps but U-Mobile and Unifi produces the slowest speeds among them at only 7.44Mbps and 8.23Mbps respectively.
Upload Speeds
Overall, Maxis has the highest upload speeds too. However, the study finds that while Maxis and Celcom has the highest upload speeds, it is more fluctuant whereas Digi, Unifi and U-Mobile have provided constant upload speeds during that period.
Latency Test
Latency is the period of waiting for an action to be executed after you have commanded that action. Maxis, U-Mobile, and Unifi provides the best latency with Digi not far behind. Celcom, however, experienced the worst latency among them at 162ms. But honestly, at 0.162 seconds you will hardly notice the slow in the fraction of seconds.
Browsing Test
This test is the average performance of loading times of the 5 most visited websites by Malaysian internet users excluding YouTube(under streaming) on 2G/3G/4G.
Unifi users experienced the least loading times among all the other telco. But looking at the results, the other service provider performed almost as well not having a huge divergence of browsing rates.
Streaming Test
This test is about measuring the quality of watching a video on YouTube. The streaming performance rate average shows Maxis has the best internet streaming performance with Digi and Celcom neck to neck with each other. Unifi and U-Mobile, however, are tied with almost similar value with a 15% difference from the 3 telco giants.
Final Comments
While the study is very thorough on the categories of data that they have collected, this study should be taken with a grain of salt. The official report has made no mention at all about the location in which the speed was measured. The report only made mention to a wide, vague area of “Malaysia”. It is no stranger to some that in the rural areas that Maxis can have a very terrible connection in that area. This also applies to the other telcos whereby the speed of one service provider differs from another service provider according to locations that are not in the city area.
Hence, to decide which mobile internet plan is the real value for your money is to do some research on the strength of the connectivity in your area. While the report is good in showing which service provider has the fastest internet connectivity, it is by no means applicable to everyone as the performance of the internet is very location-based. However, internet speeds in Malaysia have come a long way since its introduction and it will no doubt will continue to improve for the better. In the meantime, Maxis users are clearly the lucky ones.
For more information about the nPerf score results, click here.
