According to a new study, Thailand ranks poorly when it comes to mobile internet speed and availability.
This puts Thailand in 70th place overall out of 87 countries surveyed, lagging behind countries such as Kenya, Lebanon and Macedonia.
According to the survey, South Korea with an average of 37.54Mbps came out on top, while Norway and Hungary, with 34.77Mbps and 30Mbps were second and third, respectively.
Regionally, Thailand was behind Hong Kong with 12.61Mbps and Malaysia with 7.86Mbps, although it was rather better than Myanmar in 78th place [4.81Mbps], Indonesia in 80th place [4.72Mbps] and the Philippines which ranked as the second worst overall coming in at 86th place with an average mobile data speed of 3.33Mbps.
OpenSignal said that its stats are based on data from smartphones that had downloaded the OpenSignal app and collected from November 2016 to January 2017.
The firm noted the results were taken from more than 19.2 billion data points from nearly 1.1 million users and involved both indoor and outdoor usage.
OpenSignal added that speeds from both 3G and 4G networks were aggregated instead of being measured individually.
The firm also said that from a previous study it found that the global average for 4G was 17.4Mbps, while 3G average speeds was 3.3Mbps.
Following the survey users in Thailand may be a little surprised by the results.
Are mobile data speeds in Thailand really that bad?
What perhaps didn’t go in Thailand’s favour was that OpenSignal’s survey also measured internet availability, with the kingdom’s slow 3G speeds also impacting on results, as 4G becomes more available throughout the country.
For instance a country with fast LTE speeds but low 4G availability might have a much lower overall speed than a country with moderate LTE speeds but a very high level of 4G availability.
In the same study, OpenSignal said mobile users in Thailand spent 35.8 % of their time connected to a Wi-Fi network, which could be expected to be more given that the study found the mobile data speeds to be so slow.
(Source:Thairath)