Smart still leads in LTE speed

MANILA, Philippines — Smart Communications Inc. continues to lead in delivering the fastest Long Term Evolution (LTE) speeds in the country, while also narrowing the gap with its rival for LTE availability, a new report from research firm OpenSignal showed.

OpenSignal said its measurement covering the period of May to July showed that Smart’s lead in LTE download speed is “still quite large” as Globe’s lead in 4G availability has “shrunk considerably.”

“In our latest test period, Smart closed the gap in 4G availability to less than four percentage points. Smart’s growth in 4G reach has been quite phenomenal lately. 18 months ago, Smart’s 4G availability score languished below 40 percent,” the report said.

The report showed that Smart’s overall average download speed in the last six months has surged 29 percent to 7.5 Mbps, while that of Globe has grown nearly 14 percent to 5 Mbps.

“We haven’t seen much change in our 4G download speed metric for either operator, but overall download speeds have risen considerably.  Smart’s increased overall speeds are due to its rapid rise in 4G availability as its customers have gained access to 4G connections more often,” OpenSignal said.

For 4G latency metric which measures a network’s response time, the report indicated that Smart’s 4G latency results suffered over the last six months, increasing by more than five milliseconds, while Globe’s improved by roughly the same amount.

“We now have a tie between the two operators in this metric whereas six months ago Smart was clearly in the lead. We also recorded dramatic improvements in 3G latency on both operators’ networks, though Smart held onto the award in this category,” it said.

The report collected 949.29 million datapoints from 76,034 users from May 1 to July 29.

“As the Philippine government tries to entice a third mobile operator into the telecom market, the archipelago nation’s two incumbents are continuing to build out their 4G services, extending their LTE signal reach and boosting mobile broadband speeds bit by bit,” OpenSignal said.