Globe is fastest Internet provider

MANILA, Philippines - Globe Telecom provides the fastest Internet service in the Philippines, besting competition in terms of upload and download speeds, according to OpenSignal (http://opensignal.com), which crowdsources cell phone signal strength.

Philippine download statistics from OpenSignal showed that Globe Telecom’s downlink speed in 10 selected cities in the country averaged 2.40 Mbps, much faster than competitions’ average downlink speed of 1.21 Mbps and 0.84 Mbps, respectively. These cities include Manila, Quezon, Caloocan, Davao, Cebu, General Santos, Taguig, Pasig, Antipolo and Zamboanga.

Upload statistics from OpenSignal also showed that Globe Telecom’s average uplink speed of 1.37 Mbps in those ten cities beats competitions’ average upload speed of 0.98 Mbps and 0.42 Mbps, respectively.

“These findings reflect the superior network quality and performance that we aimed for through our modernization initiative. We will continue to optimize our already modernized network in line with our commitment of further advancing our network infrastructure to enable us to stay ahead of our customers’ growing demand for bandwidth,” Globe President & CEO Ernest Cu said.

Globe is the first telecommunications company in the Philippines to achieve 100% 3G coverage for its entire network, providing its customers with high-speed wireless Internet for faster data interchange on their mobile devices. Globe also expects to fully equip its network with the more advanced 4G infrastructure, using the HSPA+ technology, by the end of the third quarter. This would further strengthen the company’s capability to provide wonderful digital lifestyle experience to its growing 43 million customers, as they will be able to enjoy faster data connectivity even as they use bandwidth-intensive multimedia data applications, such as video and photography.

This week, Globe secured approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue up to P10 billion worth of non-voting preferred shares. Globe specifically obtained clearance to register up to 20 million new non-voting perpetual preferred shares at an offer price of P500 per share. Proceeds from the share sale, involving 14 million preferred shares worth P7 billion, and an oversubscription option of six million shares worth P3 billion, will be used in part to fund rollout of long-term evolution technology (LTE) and as well as investments in fixed broadband.

Sustaining its growth momentum, Globe posted a core net profit growth of 18% in the first half of the year, underpinned by strong performance of its business segments. Service revenues in the January to June totaled P47.7 billion, 7 percent higher than the P44.5 billion reported in the same period last year, leading to core net profit of P7.6 billion compared with P6.4 billion a year earlier. Net profit stood at P6.8 billion, almost a four-fold increase from P1.4 billion a year earlier.