And The Winner Is…

This is an article from Mobile World magazine...

When all the results were tabulated, we found that Maxis performed the best among all three telcos. We found that the Maxis network delivered consistently high speeds at all our test areas. If any, Maxis was slow in the KLCC area, which was surprising to us, given that their HQ is located there.

DiGi was close in most tests and even faster on some occasions. The speeds we got from Celcom’s network were slower than the other two telcos and that too surprised us. So much so, that we actually sent the team out on another day with a different Celcom SIM card and modem just to make sure that we were getting accurate readings. The team came back with the same speeds for Celcom. In short, when all the results were put together, Maxis had come out tops in this road test.

Look at the tables and graphs that detail our road test results. You will see that Maxis hit peak speeds of nearly 4 Mbps in the Wangsa Maju area, higher than we expected. It gave us peak speeds of over 2 Mbps at KLCC, nearly 1.7 Mbps at Bangsar and 1.1 Mbps at the Curve area. Those results were better than its competitors.

On average download speeds, Maxis was still ahead. We got average speed of 525 Kbps at Wangsa Maju when downloading a YouTube video. DiGi beat out Maxis at KLCC area but Maxis was top again at Bangsar and The Curve.

On uplink speeds, which are an indication of how long it would take a user to upload stuff such as Facebook photos, speeds were much slower on all networks. But that is expected as all networks usually have slower uplink speeds. Maxis was still faster than DiGi and Celcom in all areas. In Bangsar, Curve and Wangsa Maju, Maxis was significantly faster than its two rivals. Both Celcom and DiGi were neck to neck in fighting for second place.

When we measured response times for popular websites, we got roughly the same results. Maxis was generally ahead with DiGi close behind. Celcom lagged behind in all areas. DiGi gave competition to Maxis and it was even ahead in some areas. But when all the results were tabulated for the various websites, we still placed Maxis in front.

As for our tests on mobile devices, you can see the picture on this article that shows a webpage loaded on one mobile device while the other one is still in the process of downloading that same site. Do visit our video site at www.mobile-world.tv and view a video of the tests on mobile devices. We used BlackBerry Bold 2 devices, by the way as all three telcos support BlackBerry phones.

Conclusion Time
The figures, we should say, speak for themselves. When we set out to do the road tests, our MW Team perhaps was expecting different results. Maxis has taken the brunt of complaints in recent times and no one would have been surprised if they had came out last in this road test. But this is why we run road tests regularly instead of listening to opinions of a few. Numbers don’t lie and we have to say that Maxis performed the best on this road test. DiGi is not far behind too. Celcom’s results were a bit of a surprise to us and we hope that it will take steps to increase network speeds.

Techies keen to see actual numbers can check out the detailed results on the following pages. For the rest of you, take our word that the Maxis high speed mobile network rules in Malaysia. Well, at least until we run our next road test.

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