Smart, Globe named Global Rising Stars

MANILA, Philippines — PLDT’s wireless unit Smart Communications Inc. and Ayala-led Globe Telecom Inc. have been recognized for significant improvements in 4G availability and video experience, respectively, by independent analytics firm Opensignal.

In a  report, Opensignal ranked the world’s operators using leading measures of mobile network experience collected from almost 96 million devices from Jan. 1 to June 28 in 2019 and 2020.

For the Philippines, Opensignal said Smart and Globe reached the category of Global Rising Stars for 4G availability and video experience, respectively, as they posted scores that “are comfortably above the global average.”

Global Rising Stars are the top 30 operators where users have seen the greatest improvement in mobile network experience.

Opensignal said Smart is a Global Rising Star for 4G availability as the average proportion of time that users on its network spent connected to 4G jumped by 17.9 percent.

4G availability is the proportion of time 4G users spend connected to 4G or LTE.

“This citation is a testament to our commitment to improving the experience of our customers,” Smart president and PLDT chief revenue officer Alfredo Panlilio said.

“As the country’s largest and only fully integrated telco, we will continue to invest in improving our network and our services, and we will benchmark our performance against countries like Vietnam and Thailand to be better. I think every Filipino deserves that kind of service,” he said.

Globe, meanwhile, is cited as a Global Rising Star for video experience, with its score soaring 32.7 percent.

Mobile video experience measures the average video experience of users on 3G and 4G network with methodology that involves measuring real-world video streams and uses an ITU-based approach for determining video quality.

“As one of the Global Rising Stars recognized by Opensignal, Globe is proud to be a telco company that commits to improve data service to our subscribers,” Globe chief technology and information officer Gil Genio said.

“Expect more of these remarkable improvements as we continue with our aggressive efforts to upgrade the network for better connectivity and service,” he said.