Philippines LTE speed among world’s slowest – study

MANILA, Philippines – A study conducted among mobile networks in the world showed that those operating in the Philippines are among the worst performing in terms of 4G LTE (fourth generation long-term evolution) network.

Latest data from OpenSignal, which crowd sourced data from millions of smartphone users across the world, showed that the Philippines has the seventh slowest LTE network among 68 countries.

The report said the Philippines has an average download speed of six megabits per second (Mbps) in the last quarter of 2015. It was ahead of Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica and Iran.

The Philippines also ranked fourth in terms of those that have the least time coverage, with an average of 43 percent. Only Ecuador, Costa Rica and Sri Lanka had less coverage among countries covered by the study.

“Time coverage measures the proportion of time users spend connected to a particular network, whether they’re indoors or out, on the move or standing still. We represent time coverage as a percentage, so if an LTE network has 80 percent time coverage, that means its customers, on average, can get an LTE signal 80 percent of the time,” the report said.

The data was based on information culled from users of Globe and Smart, the two telecommunications companies that offer LTE in the country.

According to OpenSignal, Smart had a download speed of seven Mbps and a time coverage of 38 percent.

Globe, meanwhile, had a download speed of four Mbps and a time coverage of 48 percent.

Singapore topped the list in terms of download speed with an average of 37 Mbps among three networks, while South Korea had the highest time coverage, with an average of 97 percent also among three networks offering LTE services.