YTL Communications has taken the opportunity to announce its all new Yes 4G LTE network along with Samsung’s new Galaxy J (2016) smartphones yesterday, while the announcement didn’t come as a surprise, medias were being surprised with a free Samsung Galaxy J1 smartphone and a Yes 4G LTE Prepaid SIM when the event ended, I was excited and interested to find out on how the telco’s 4G LTE network will perform against its current WiMAX network, the company claims the same 85% nationwide coverage as its WiMAX network for its newly deployed 4G LTE network, so let’s see how they perform against each other.
Our device for this test is a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and a Yes Huddle XS MiFi from the telco, Speedtest.net is used as the connection benchmarking app and fixed to Digi’s Petaling Jaya server.
Credit: Metageek
For reference, here is a RSSI reading reference table to determine the quality of a network connection.
1) KLGadgetGuy Office (8th Floor Balcony Area, Pacific Place, Ara Damansara)
To be fair, I had both services connected at our balcony area and the RSSI reading on both devices are rather peculiar. The Galaxy Note 5 reported a poor RSSI reading of -88 dBm with a full five signal bar, while the Huddle XS reported a rather strong -55 dBM despite having a two out of five signal bars.
The advantage of LTE is obvious here, it demonstrates a faster ping response and 4 times faster transfer speeds than the telco’s WiMAX network, the upload speed on LTE is also more consistent as well. Hence, the RSSI readings don’t necessarily reflect the actual performance of both networks, but I can also assume that the WiMAX base station could be loaded at the time of testing.
2) Subway, Menara Olympia Kuala Lumpur
The speedtest of Yes 4G LTE and WiMAX continues in downtown Kuala Lumpur, I was at Subway in Menara Olympia and have decided to perform the next round of speed test on Yes 4G’s services. For both service type, the area that I’m performing the test has extremely poor coverage as you can see in the RSSI readings, but what really surprised me was the low latency of both of Yes’ services, even though Yes’ 4G LTE network continues to show favorable speeds than its WiMAX service.
The Yes 4G LTE network will officially launch at June 30 2016, hence this comparison should only be taken as a reference as the company might not have fully launched the service properly. Stay tuned for more tests coming right up!
