South Korea widens global lead in mobile broadband

South Korea is known for its broad mobile coverage and super fast speeds, but a report from OpenSignal shows just how far ahead the country is compared to other markets.

According to the wireless coverage mapping firm, the overall speed of South Korea’s 3G and 4G networks is 10Mb/s, or 25 per cent, faster than second ranked Singapore, while its 3G/4G availability is 3 percentage points higher than Japan, which was number two with a rating of 95.52 per cent.

Asia had three countries in the top five ranking of fastest 3G/4G speeds across 95 countries (see chart left, click to enlarge). Number one South Korea’s overall speed was 41.3Mb/s, followed by Singapore (31.19Mb/s), while Australia was fourth (25Mb/s). Japan was ninth with a score of 21.25Mb/s, Taiwan 11th (19.46Mb/s) and New Zealand 12th (19.34Mb/s).

China was 15th with a 17.95Mb/s speed. India (5.13Mb/s) and Myanmar (4.78Mb/s) were both ranked above the Philippines, which had a speed of just 3.13Mb/s.

OpenSignal defines overall speed as the average mobile data connection a user experiences based on both the speeds and availability of a country’s 3G and 4G networks.

Coverage
In terms of coverage, Asia again was on top. The region had six countries in the top ten, with 3G or better data signal availability ratings ranging from 98.54 per cent (South Korea) to 93.87 per cent (Taiwan). Japan ranked second, Australia was fourth, Singapore fifth, New Zealand sixth and Taiwan eighth.

Surprisingly, Thailand ranked higher than Hong Kong (see chart left, click to enlarge), with a 3G/4G availability rating of 93.47 compared with the territory’s 92.91 per cent.

China was much further down the ranks, in between Greece and Brazil, with a rating of just 75.47 per cent. India was near the bottom with a 56.10 score.

The study also found that Wi-Fi is the dominant data access technology for mobile device users, in both countries where high-speed cellular networks are ubiquitous and where mobile data infrastructure is poor.

OpenSignal’s Global State of Mobile Networks study was based on 12.3 billion measurements taken by 822,556 OpenSignal users.