In a recent analysis of regional wireless internet services, 4G download and upload speeds were compared across 12 major cities in East Asia.
Singapore and Seoul stood out as the clear winners, with each city’s download and upload speeds both proving to be within one megabit per second (Mbps) of each other.
Other cities in the region managed to hold their own as well. Despite having only recently launched 4G services within the last two years, both Vietnam and Myanmar’s capitals proved to support connectivity speeds rivalling those in Taiwan and Japan’s largest cities.
This may be partly due to the fact that these Southeast Asian countries having fewer 4G consumers than their northern counterparts, however, and the report adds that both Yangon and Ho Chi Minh could see a significant decrease in connection speeds as more customers switch to 4G services.
In Southeast Asian cities where 4G download speeds remain at or below the global average – including Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Jakarta – the predominating network trends in these cities tend to focus on 4G availability over speed.
“As 4G connections are far superior to 3G connections, Southeast Asia’s operators seem intent on making LTE services accessible to the vast majority of their customers before they turn their attention to raw speed,” the report read.
When it comes to uploading content, even the slowest cities in the region, Phnom Penh and Jakarta, averaged “decent” speeds of about 4.9 Mbps.
OpenSignal is currently undergoing a second analysis focused on 4G availability across East Asia.
