Three years after launching LTE, Malaysia’s operators have expanded their network capacity and boosted speeds with new technology, allowing them to deliver 4G speeds just short of the global average of 13.5Mb/s.

Unlike many countries, Malaysia has no dominant 4G speed leader, with the four operators locked in a close battle, though Maxis holds an edge in coverage.

Three operators’ 4G download speeds (nationwide) were so closely matched that OpenSignal called it a three-way draw, with U Mobile (13.8Mb/s) marginally edging out Maxis (13Mb/s) and Digi (12.4Mb/s). Celcom was fourth with an average 4G speed of 9.92Mb/s.

Celcom also couldn’t match its peers in LTE speeds in the capital region, where there was the same three-way draw found on the national level. U Mobile, Maxis and Digi all had average 4G download speeds between 13Mb/s and 14Mb/s, compared with Celcom’s 10.6Mb/s.

Coverage leader
Although Maxis was the 4G coverage leader, overall coverage in the country still trails the global average. OpenSignal, which tracks network availability through a metric called time coverage, reported Maxis had a 4G time coverage of 70 per cent. Celcom, Digi and U Mobile scored no higher than 58 per cent.

While the research firm found that Celcom’s coverage scored quite poorly on the national level — finishing last or tied for last in all six categories — its networks performed much better in Klang Valley, the country’s economic centre. Maxis also dominated in coverage in that region, providing an LTE signal 77 per cent of the time. Celcom and Digi battled for second place with time coverage metrics of around 66 per cent.

In terms of latency on their 4G networks, Digi, Maxis and U Mobile also tied.

U Mobile had the fastest 3G network, with a download speed of 3.3Mb/s, beating its competitors even though it shares 3G infrastructure with Maxis outside of urban markets.

OpenSignal found that when it factored in both 3G and 4G networks, Maxis clearly came out on top because of its superior LTE coverage.

The company gathered 40 million data samples collected by 21,000 OpenSignal users from December to February.