Woodleigh Mall, which recently opened last month, disappointed visitors with its lack of reliable electronic payment options due to extremely weak or almost non-existent 4G or 3G coverage. This issue has persisted since the mall opened, affecting all telecom operators in Singapore.
Today, we ventured to the mall situated adjacent to Woodleigh MRT station. Exiting the MRT station, we took the escalator down to B1, where the supermarket, shops, food court, and fast food restaurants are located.
Using two smartphones, Phone 1 had SIMBA and Giga (Starhub) SIM cards, while Phone 2 had Circles.Life (M1) and ZYM (Singtel) SIM cards.
Upon checking with the Network Cell Info app, we found some signals within the mall. Previously, the detected signals were quite weak, ranging around -110 or lower, presumably originating from the base stations outside the mall.
While exploring the mall, we discovered an indoor cell provided by SIMBA just outside the Popular Store. Launching the browser, we were able to surf the internet without any issues. We conducted a speedtest.net, and it yielded a score of 93.3 Mbps.
In the same location, ZYM only managed to achieve 1 Mbps, Giga struggled to load pages, occasionally dropping to 3G with an H+ indicator on the top bar. Although Circles.Life displayed a decent signal, it failed to load any data. ZYM’s performance improved when closer to the food court, possibly due to connecting with towers outside the glass panel.
The situation on Level 1 mirrored that of Basement 1. On Level 2, Giga experienced better speeds, particularly near the link bridge.
Regarding the car park, apart from SIMBA, the other three telcos essentially had no coverage.
We express our hope that all telcos will accelerate the deployment of 4G, or even 5G, within the mall, considering the indispensability of mobile internet in our daily lives.
