Meqyas, Q2 2018 Report
In 2017, the CST in partnership with SamKnows launched a project to measure internet performance. The project, named Meqyas, gives internet users in Saudi access to Smartphone apps and Whiteboxes to measure internet quality of experience. The goal of Meqyas is to increase transparency and encourage better internet performance throughout the Kingdom.
Initial findings
1st April 2018 - 30th June 2018
This report focuses on an overview of the fixed-line and mobile internet performance across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. During the second quarter of 2018, the number of testing devices for fixed broadband continued to increase, thus providing a more solid statistical sample that better reflects the quality of broadband services in the KSA .
We’ve pulled out some of the key findings and these are highlighted below:
- 4G mobile broadband showed very good improvements during Q2 2018 in both download and upload speeds. The time required to load common websites is low, and in line with a well-provisioned network.
- The quality of mobile broadband service continues to be affected by peak hours of activity, but there has been a good improvement compared to Q1 2018.
- The quality of fixed-line internet services is, as expected, heavily dependent on the type of connection. Fiber connections perform much better than copper-based ADSL services.
- Average download speeds on fixed broadband across the KSA are slightly below those advertised by service providers. By contrast, upload speeds are largely in line with the advertised rates.
- Network congestion is not a significant issue, with very little impact on download and upload speeds during the busiest hours of the day.
Mobile broadband services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia delivered an average download speed of 25.4Mbps during the second quarter of 2018, whilst upload speeds were of 12.6Mbps. These figures represent good increases compared to the 19.3Mbps and 11.2Mbps seen in the first quarter of the year, and are representative of a good mobile network.
Fixed-line services maintained a high performance in upload speed at nearly 93.5% of advertised rates, whilst download speeds were lower at 84.8%. Both download and upload for fixed-line services showed improvements of 1.5% compared to the first quarter of the year.
Mobile results
1st April 2018 - 30th June 2018
Mobile download speeds continued to improve each month during Q2 2018, achieving a maximum of 25.7Mbps during May and June - an increase of nearly 50% compared to December 2017 when the testing programme began. This increase was driven by the higher speeds obtained by 4G technology, whilst download speeds over 3G decreased slightly to a minimum of 6.2Mbps in June.
Mobile upload speeds also continued to improve during Q2 2018, reaching a peak of 12.8Mbps in May and June - a 25% increase compared to December 2017. As with download speeds, the improvement was entirely led by the performance of the 4G spectrum as upload speeds over 3G saw little change.
The chart below shows how significant the difference is between 4G and 3G performance across mobile operators. STC delivered the highest overall speed on 4G at 34.2Mbps - over 5 times faster than on 3G. Zain's speeds were slightly lower than other service providers on both 4G and 3G.
The difference between 4G and 3G was even more remarkable for upload speeds. STC, which had the highest upload speeds on both technologies, outperformed its 3G speeds by over 7 times on 4G. For Mobily - the operator with the lowest upload speeds - the difference was also very high with 4G outperforming 3G by over 4 times.
Network congestion continued to be an issue in mobile broadband, resulting in an 11% decrease in download speeds during the hours of peak activity. This is, however, an improvement from Q1 2018 when mobile download speeds decreased by a much higher 26%. The effect was much smaller on upload speeds, with a decrease of around 3.1%.
The YouTube measurement streams a real video from the live YouTube service. This is a particularly interesting service to measure as traffic is often delivered directly from the service providers’ networks, through the use of Google Global Caches (GGCs); these are servers installed by the service providers inside their network to cache YouTube and other Google content.
The impact of radio technology was also evident on the quality of YouTube streaming, with 4G technology resulting in a much higher percentage of videos being successfully streamed at 1080p resolution (Full HD) than on 3G. STC delivered 75% of videos at 1080p resolution via 4G vs 44% on 3G, and Mobily's ratio was of 68% for 4G and 43% on 3G. The difference on Zain, whilst lower, was still notable at 57% vs 38%. Streaming at 720p resolution was much less dependent on radio technology, with successful streams in equal measures across all providers on 4G and 3G.
Web browsing measurements were conducted from the participants’ smartphones to a common Saudi Arabian web site. The test measures the total amount of time it takes to fetch the web page and all associated objects and indicates how long it takes for a webpage to load in a user’s browser.
The average time required to load webpages on the 4G spectrum was 1 second or lower for all providers during off-peak times, with very minor increases during peak hours that would not have had a noticeable impact in a user's internet browsing experience. 3G webpage loading times were higher by approximately 0.6 to 0.8 seconds depending on the operator, but also low enough as to not be noticeable by most users.
Fixed-line results
1st April 2018 - 30th June 2018
The next section shows the impact of peak hour activity on fixed-line broadband speeds across all of KSA, first overall, and then across different service providers. The impact of peak hour activity on fixed-line broadband was very limited, with a negligible 1% decrease in download performance, and 1.4% in upload.
Fiber connections delivered noticeably higher performance compared to copper-based ADSL connections, as is to be expected from the difference in technology. STC fiber services provided the highest speeds compared to their advertised rates at 94.5% during off-peak hours with little impact during peak hours, whilst the provider's ADSL service delivered 75.0% of advertised rates, also with limited decrease during peak hours. Mobily's fiber services had a performance very close to 90% of advertised during off-peak hours, decreasing by 3.1% during peak hours.
The YouTube measurement streams real video from the live YouTube service. This is a particularly interesting service to measure as traffic is often delivered directly from the service providers’ networks, through the use of Google Global Caches (GGCs); these are servers installed by the service providers inside their network to cache YouTube and other Google content.
The quality of YouTube video streaming was very similar across service providers, with Mobily and STC's fiber products delivering successful Full HD streams In 76% and 77% of tests conducted. STC's ADSL products also had a very high rate of Full HD streaming at 73%. Although we would normally expect a larger difference, this difference is reduced by the use of Google Global Cache technology. Tests resulting in Standard Definition as the maximum achievable resolution were minimal, although slightly more frequent on ADSL services.
Web browsing measurements were conducted from the Whiteboxes in participants’ homes to a selection of common Saudi Arabian websites. The test measures the total time to fetch the web page and all associated objects.
STC's fiber services provided users with the lowest times required to fully load common webpages at 2.3 seconds, whilst users on Mobily's fiber service would have required approximately half a second longer during off-peak hours. STC's ADSL services had webpage loading times at just over 3 seconds, also with very little impact from the busiest hours of network activity.
Latency to CDNs is important as CDNs are where providers, such as major social networks and popular mobile app providers, host their content (e.g images, videos, web code etc). The lower the latency to the CDN, the better your experience using its content will be. This metric reflects the ease with which your internet connection can obtain content from key providers.
None of the six major Content Delivery Network operators tested were found to have infrastructure present within the Kingdom. Some CDN operators had infrastructure within the region, whilst others - such as Amazon and Apple - saw their traffic being served from very distant locations such as the US and western Europe, thus resulting in noticeably higher latencies that would have been made even higher for users on ADSL connections due to the copper-based technology.