Philippines mobile experience improves significantly in 2 years — Opensignal

MANILA, Philippines — Mobile network experience in the country has seen “impressive improvements” since 2017, according to independent mobile analytics firm Opensignal.

“President Duterte recently said that he would close down the country’s operators unless they improved their services significantly by December. This raises an obvious question: how much has the mobile network experience of our users in the Philippines changed in recent years?” Opensignal said in a report.

According to Opensignal, download speed in the country improved by around 80 percent as average download speeds rose from 4.7 Mbps to 8.5 Mbps between the fourth quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of 2020,

During the period, 4G availability in the country also increased by nearly 20 percentage points and has pushed past the 80 percent mark.

“4G availability rises as operators invest in their 4G networks and it is very sensitive in this regard as the most common dead zone users struggle occur indoors and this is where most of our availability data is collected. Given that 4G speeds far exceed those typically seen on 3G, an increase in 4G availability is typically associated with a rise in average download speeds,” it said.

In terms of 4G availability per operator between the fourth quarter of 2017 and second quarter of 2020, Opensignal said Globe’s score rose by 14.5 percentage points, while Smart’s score climbed by 27.8 percentage points.

The average download speeds observed by Globe and Smart users, meanwhile, rose by 3.5 Mbps and 4.3 Mbps, respectively, during the period.

“As we’ve seen, the mobile network experience of users in the Philippines has improved significantly in terms of both download speed experience and 4G availability since the start of 2018,” Opensignal said.

“However, should the Philippines wish to accelerate this trend, then one possible approach would be to draw on some of the actions taken by regulators from around the world to ensure that speeds remain resilient despite the increased load on telecommunications networks that was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic — such as increasing the availability of spectrum and cutting red tape,” it said.

Duterte during his last State of the Nation Address called out Globe and Smart to improve their services by December.

PLDT chairman, president and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan assured the public that the country’s largest and only integrated telecommunications company would comply with the President’s call for improved services by year end.

Globe, for its part, said it heeds the call of Duterte to improve telco services.

“The results of these speed tests over the past several years show the impact of our sustained network investments, particularly in LTE, in delivering progressively better internet services to our customers.  We are continuing that investment effort as we further expand the reach of our LTE service and as we start rolling out 5G,” Smart president and CEO and PLDT chief revenue officer Alfredo Panlilio said.