Outdoor mobile broadband performance analysis in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand

Abstract

This paper presents the measurement of mobile broadband (MBB) performance and specifies insightful knowledge about 3G and 4G technologies of dense urban and urban morphologies in Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. This study will also contribute to planning efficiently for the deployment of 5G network in these three countries. The data to characterize and analyze the MBB performances are gathered through a driving test (DT) conducted in areas of the three countries for two months starting from January to February by utilizing an unbranded smartphone named Samsung Galaxy S6. The performance data in our MBB analysis was collected based on diverse national mobile network operators (MNOs) in outdoor areas of the selected states in the mentioned countries. Four different performance metrics (coverage, speed, latency, and satisfaction) were investigated to assess the network performance for one of MBB's services that contain video streaming services. Within video services, two distinct resolutions including 720p (low) and 1080p (high) for an identical YouTube video were loaded alternately by the same smartphone. The research is meant to mimic real scenarios in the case of the unlocked smartphone to any technology during the time of loading a video, which contributes to knowing the network coverage of 2G, 3G, and 4G technologies in the chosen areas. The analysis of the 2G technology is excluded in the current paper because of the limited data amount of 2G. The MBB performance measurement results in the tested areas revealed that, on average, the 4G network outperformed the 3G network according to the investigated four performance indicators. Therefore, across the tested territories, the 4G technology offered better network coverage compared to the 3G technology. The vMOS scores for 4G technology across video services were more than 3, whereas the 3G technology has achieved scores smaller than 3. Also, the 4G network has achieved E2E RTT-Ping server latency improvements of 89.90%, 59.30%, 67.48%, and 58.04% compared to the 3G network in the urban and dense urban of Klang Valley, Malaysia, urban of Singapore, and urban of Thailand, respectively. Moreover, it is found that 4G technology can provide improvements up to the factors of 1.29, 1.61, 1.98, and 1.35 in the download speed for video streaming compared to the 3G technology for urban and dense urban of Klang Valley, Malaysia, urban of Singapore, and urban of Thailand, respectively.