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Advances in 5G Boosts Mobile Speeds in Taiwan
Taiwan has seen considerable growth in its mobile performance since it issued its first 5G commercial license in July 2020. Using Speedtest Intelligence® data from Q4 2020, we explored how the emerging technology has affected overall mobile speeds, how much faster 5G was compared to 4G, which operator had the fastest 5G and what speeds look like in Taiwan’s largest metropolitan areas.
Mobile internet speeds in Taiwan have steadily increased in the last two years thanks, in part, to 5G deployments across the country. In December 2020, Taiwan reached 16th place in the Speedtest Global IndexTM, an improvement from their 29th place ranking in January 2019. Looking at mean download speed over mobile on all technologies, Taiwan showed a 30.4% increase from 2019 to 2020.
| Download (Mbps) 2019 | Download (Mbps) 2020 | % Increase | |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Operators | 42.20 | 55.01 | 30.4% |
We compared 5G speeds in Taiwan to speeds over 4G using measurements from devices using modern chipsets. As expected, median download speed over 5G far exceeded that over 4G during Q4 2020, with 5G coming in 522.0% faster than 4G. We report 5G using median rather than mean speeds because the potential for outliers is high, so median gives a better expectation of the performance a consumer is likely to experience.
FarEasTone showed the fastest median download speed over 5G among mobile operators in Taiwan during Q4 2020, followed by Chunghwa Telecom. Taiwan Mobile was third and TSTAR fourth.
Country-wide averages do not reflect the differences in performance that can occur between different metropolitan areas. We looked at median download speeds over 5G for Taiwan’s five most populous metropolitan areas during Q4 2020 to get a better understanding of how 5G performance varies in locations across the country.
5G download speeds varied among Taiwan’s largest metropolitan areas, but were not far from the country-wide average for 5G of 260.01 Mbps during this period. While it would appear that Taoyuan had the fastest median download speed over 5G at 265.01 Mbps, followed by Taipei at 261.79 Mbps and Taichung at 260.20 Mbps, the confidence intervals show that it’s really a toss-up between cities at the top of this list.
Confidence intervals also make it impossible to declare a slowest city, though the slowest median download speed was measured in New Taipei at 236.69 Mbps.
The expansion of 5G in Taiwan is exciting and has provided consumers with much faster mobile speeds. We look forward to seeing how this emerging technology continues to expand across the country and how it affects mobile performance in Taiwan.