Enterprise

Singapore, S. Korea dominate 4G LTE rankings, Philippines struggles

Published

November 10, 2016

Marvin Velasco

Crowdsourced mobile data from OpenSignal revealed some interesting figures for the third quarter of 2016. Based on statistics published today, Singapore and South Korea have the best 4G data speeds and nationwide availability, respectively. Asian neighbors India, Indonesia, and the Philippines didn’t do nearly as well.

4G LTE connectivity is expanding at an exponential rate across the globe, and gradually eclipsing the older 3G technologies from a generation ago. Unfortunately, not every country is experiencing equal opportunities, and some are left wondering where all the bandwidth is going.

Singapore gets top honors for 4G speeds in the world, averaging a blistering 45.86 megabits per second (Mbps). This means you can wirelessly download files at 5.7 megabytes per second (MBps — notice the uppercase B). Remember that a megabyte is equal to eight megabits.

The city-state is followed closely by South Korea at 45.77Mbps, Hungary at 40.61Mbps, and Romania at 35.61Mbps. You have to go all the way down to 25.75Mbps to discover the next-fastest East Asian nation, Taiwan. How about high-tech Japan? Its citizens are enjoying 22.38Mbps.

Even though the majority of the included countries averaged more than 20Mbps, the global average is only 17.4Mbps. We can the blame the terribly low speeds of developing nations for dropping the number.

Indonesia, the Philippines, and India were particularly bad for Asia, averaging only 8.79Mbps, 7.27Mbps, and 6.39Mbps, respectively. It gets even more embarrassing when you combine the three, giving you a total of 22.45Mbps, just above the global norm.

4g-availability-asia-20161110

For nationwide availability, OpenSignal doesn’t measure geographic reach; rather, the metric tracks the “proportion of time users have access to a particular network.” This places indoor connections and moments of high network congestion into consideration, putting all participants on a more level playing field. Garnering a score of 50 percent means users have 4G access half of the time.

South Korea has a near perfect score of 95.71 percent, followed by Japan’s 92.03 percent and Lithuania’s 84.73 percent. The worst-performing countries are Sri Lanka (40.27%), Lebanon (41.53%), Ecuador (42.56%), Ireland (43.45%), and the Philippines (44.8%).

Notice something? Yeah, the Philippines ranks in the bottom five for both 4G speeds and availability. Fingers can be pointed at multiple excuses, such as the difficulty in covering an archipelago and the country’s mobile network duopoly, but the fact remains that the Pacific-based republic struggles to keep up with evolving wireless standards.

Take note, however, that even though this is a global survey comprising 78 countries, numerous African and Asian regions are excluded because they lack test data for fair analysis.

Click the image for a closer look

You can find the complete set of statistics on OpenSignal’s website, complete with interactive maps and graphs. It’s all quite fascinating, and will either enlighten or frustrate you, depending on where you live.

If you want to contribute to the cause, you can download OpenSignal’s app for Android or iOS. On top of collecting data, it can also help you find more stable network connections and nearby Wi-Fi hotspots around the globe.

Confused by some of the terminology? Watch our LTE-A explainer video to bring you up to speed:

Enterprise

Global Connect Show Shenzhen empowers Chinese enterprises

Opportune time for new Chinese enterprises to go global

Published

June 2, 2026

GadgetMatch

The Global Connect Show Shenzhen 2026 (GCS SZ 2026) was successfully held on June 1 at China’s innovation hub.

More than 100 Chinese enterprises joined the event, encouraged to expand into international markets.

The program focused on three core pillars:

Chinese brand going global
Global channel connection
Dedicated “Into the Enterprise” series

China has developed a new generation of internationally competitive companies across various sectors, including:

consumer electronics
smart hardware
artificial intelligence
robotics

As these companies enter a new phase of going global, demand is growing for global communications, brand building, market trust, and localized business networks.

As such, the Global Connect Show is one of the platforms to be able to strengthen the relationship across enterprises, partners, business associations, and even media and influencers.

It is a significant window for innovative brands to enter global retail channels by building compelling brand narratives and developing strong localized operations.

This year’s GCS is the third staging of the show, which consistently aims to match Chinese brands with partners through a results-first approach. Such an approach includes hands-on product experiences, presentations, and one-on-one meetings.

Enterprise

New US-China ban might affect 75% of phones, laptops

Companies can no longer use Chinese labs to test their products.

Published

May 5, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

The United States is continuing its crusade against Chinese technology today. However, the target now isn’t a company from China but a method important to a lot of non-Chinese brands.

Today, via Reuters, the Federal Communications Commission (or FCC) has unanimously voted to prohibit companies from using Chinese labs to test their electronic devices if they are to be sold for use in the United States. Naturally, this includes smartphones and computers.

Notably, the prohibition doesn’t directly target Chinese brands. However, it will still affect a huge swath of the industry. The FCC estimates that around 75 percent of the entire market are devices tested in labs based in China.

This means that companies who wish to sell future products in the country must move their testing to labs in the United States or other countries that it deems secure. At its current iteration, the prohibition will not affect devices that already earned their certification prior. However, it might prevent them from getting recertified once their current one expires.

Now, the prohibition isn’t an absolute lock just yet. The FCC will allow the industry to submit comments about the proposal. But, with a unanimous vote from the FCC, companies might have to start looking for alternative testing sites if they want to stay operation in the United States.

Enterprise

OnePlus has reportedly merged with realme

Both brands were previously rumored for restructuring early this year.

Published

April 30, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

OnePlus has a problem. For a while now, rumors have swirled about the company’s dissolution. For their part, the company has continued to deny the reports, citing business as usual. Likely to their dismay, the reports just keep coming. Today, sources have hinted that OnePlus has merged with realme.

Back in January, it was rumored that OnePlus would be closing up shop this year. Since the company very quickly denied the rumors, the report hardly made waves. However, a suspected merger with realme is more difficult to debunk.

For one, realme is itself in a very interesting position. Also back in January, realme was reportedly moving back into being a sub-brand of OPPO. Coupled together with the OnePlus debacle, all this internal restructuring seems par for the course.

According to Digital Chat Station on Weibo, OnePlus and realme have already concluded the merger. The two brands have reportedly united their Chinese and international operations under one roof. Likewise, their marketing will be the same. Pete Lau will still be the main head for this new division.

As with anything of this nature, take this with a grain of salt. OPPO, OnePlus, and realme have not issued any official statements concerning a merger or a shutdown for any brand.