Smart unleashed fastest mobile data speeds in Q4, says Ookla

MANILA, Philippines — Smart Communications Inc., the wireless unit of telco giant PLDT Inc., edged out the competition to post the fastest mobile data speeds during the final quarter of 2021.

A report released Wednesday by Ookla, a free online service that provides analysis of Internet speeds, found that Smart recorded the highest “Speed Score” of 68.78 in the fourth quarter, inching up from the preceding three months and outperforming its rivals Globe Telecom Inc. and Dito Telecommunity Corp.

Globe's speed score last quarter stood at 32.67 while Dito, the latest entrant among Philippine telcos, eked out a rating of 24.47.

The speed score takes into account 80% of the download speed while the remaining 20% is based on a telco operator's upload speed, as Ookla clarified surfing the Internet is typically "more affected" by the former. The speed tests were measured on smart devices with modern chipsets, such as those that could detect and use 5G networks.

The countries are then ranked on Ookla’s “Speedtest Global Index”, which are now based on median download speed to best reflect the speeds a user is likely to achieve in a market. As of December last year, the Philippines ranked 89th globally in terms of mobile internet performance, up by a notch from November.

Ookla data also reported that among the country's most populous cities, consumers in Caloocan enjoyed the fastest median download speeds at 25.24 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2021. Manila and Quezon City trailed behind with 24.34 and 23.21 Mbps each.

In terms of latency, which is the time that takes for one's device to respond to requests from host servers, Smart posted the lowest figures among the three operations. Smart's median latency, measured in milliseconds, displayed 20 ms while Globe and Dito came close at 24 and 25 ms, respectively.

For 5G download speed, Smart top-billed the ranking as it posted 220.89 Megabits per second as opposed to Globe's 117.93 Mbps.

A recent study by Cisco found that 5G penetration in the Philippines could reach 15% of the country's total population by 2025, adding to the projected 200 million 5G subscriptions in Southeast Asia by that year.