Vietnam has second fastest 4G download speed in Southeast Asia

Young people surf Internet on their phones in Tao Dan Park in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by Shutterstock/Anh Huy.

Singapore has the fastest download speed of mobile data in Southeast Asia and sixth globally at 47.5 Mbps.

In Southeast Asia, Laos ranked 52nd (17.1 Mbps), Brunei 55th (16.4 Mbps), Myanmar 56th (16.4 Mbps); Malaysia 73rd (11 Mbps); Indonesia 80th (9.9 Mbps); Thailand at 81st (9.2 Mbps); the Philippines 83rd (8.5 Mbps) and Cambodia at 87th (8 Mbps).

Canada’s 4G download speed is the fastest in the world at 59.6 Mbps, followed by the Republic of Korea and the Netherlands.

Vietnamese users have seen a 46.6 % increase in their download speed over the previous year, when it was clocked at 14.1 Mbps.

The report was compiled using tests and results gathered from 43.3 million mobile devices around the world, with over 87 million measurements between January 1 and March this year.

Vietnam’s 4G networks performed better in terms of availability than speed, ranking 36th among 100 economies, with Vietnamese users having access to 4G networks 87.9 % of the time, higher than Laos (86.2 %), Malaysia (84.4 %), Brunei (83.1 %), and the Philippines (81.5 %), the report said.

Vietnamese telecom firms started piloting 4G, the fourth generation of broadband cellular network technology, succeeding 3G, in December 2015. The government plans to expand coverage to 95 % of the population by 2020.

The telecom firms are also chasing a head start in the 5G race, with Vietnam aiming to become an early adopter of the technology. Telecom giant Viettel broadcast from its network of 5G base transceiver stations in Ho Chi Minh City last September for the first time.

Around 64 million people, or over half the country's population, are online.