Changi Airport may be the world’s best airport, but its Wi-Fi and mobile speeds need improving
Even though Changi Airport ranks above average, we still trail behind the top 10.
Ookla has just released a report detailing Wi-Fi and mobile data speeds across 48 airports, and to cut to the chase, Singapore’s own Changi Airport is ranked at the top half of the chart across both categories. However, it finds itself lagging behind some of the top competitors.
The report, which used data gathered across Q1 2025 through Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence, compared the download and upload speeds of the airports with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) benchmark speed of 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload.
An additional note, while 48 airports were tested for their mobile speeds, only 41 had their Wi-Fi tested, and certain airports like Istanbul Airport and O’Hare International Airport had only one of either categories tested.
To begin, mobile data speeds at Changi Airport exceeded the FCC benchmark, with download/upload speeds of 167.37Mbps and 30.37Mbps respectively. 5G bolstered the download speed further to 326.09Mbps. Wi-Fi, however, falls short by just a hair, with download and upload speeds of 96.94Mbps and 114.17Mbps respectively.
With these results, Changi Airport’s Wi-Fi ranks as the 14th fastest in both Wi-Fi upload and download speeds, and the 18th fastest in mobile download speeds. While it’s not the slowest, it can’t quite crack the top 25th percentile in both lists.
An excerpt from Ookla’s report of the airports that exceeded the benchmark, and a few others that came close. Image: Ookla.
Almost half of the airports tested had mobile data speeds that exceeded the benchmark. Image: Ookla
In fact, clearing this benchmark seems to be a challenge for airports as a whole, as only 12 out of the 41 airports tested had data speeds that met or exceeded it. The airports tested by-and-large do better on mobile data, with 21 out of the 48 meeting or exceeding the benchmark. Only three airports, Phoenix Sky Harbor International, Hangzhou Xiaoshan International and Toronto Pearson International, were able to crack the benchmark in both Wi-Fi and mobile data categories.
As the report points out, one reason for the better mobile speeds is that mobile carriers might be prioritising investment in places where human traffic (and thus, data traffic) is high, like airports.
But what if you were travelling across continents? Comparing the three most tested regions, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, the latter had worse scores across the board. Not a single European airport met the benchmark on Wi-Fi, and only Amsterdam and Frankfurt had mobile speeds that exceeded it.
The Asia-Pacific region, by contrast, had more airports that met the benchmark. But on closer inspection, many of them are located in China. Only one airport, the aforementioned Hangzhou Xiaoshan International, exceeded the benchmark on Wi-Fi. Finally, in North America, there were 10 airports that had Wi-Fi speeds faster than the FCC’s benchmarks, though only four North American airports had mobile speeds that did the same.
And in case you were curious about the other airports outside of these three regions, Istanbul Airport had an astounding 600.4Mbps/78.81Mbps download and upload speeds over mobile (Wi-Fi was not tested). Hamad and Dubai International Airports, in Qatar and the UAE respectively, also had similarly fast mobile data download speeds, at 412.8Mbps and 333.32Mbps respectively.
Why are fast data speeds at airports a challenge?
Apart from the high traffic, devices such as check-in kiosks also rely on an airport’s network, increasing the amount of data traffic as a whole. Pictured here is Changi Terminal 2. Image: Pixabay.
Overall, the report paints a pretty inconsistent picture of airport data speeds as a whole, though the report also details that optimising airport networks is by no means an easy feat.
Airports take in large amounts of people every day, resulting in a similarly large number of devices needing to connect to the internet. And the fact that an airport, by design, is a transient space where people are constantly moving in and out, means that data demands are always fluctuating. Furthermore, airport terminals tend to be huge buildings whose construction consists of signal-dampening materials, like concrete, steel and glass, being used on a large scale.
Consider also the myriad of devices that passengers and airport staff use, including air check-in kiosks and the airport’s security apparatuses, all of which utilise an airport’s network infrastructure; and the fact that air traffic communications often places restrictions on where and how wireless communications can be built and use, and you’ll start to realise the complexities of designing and maintaing good and reliable wireless communication at an airport.
Source: Ookla