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Mobile Networks Update: Philippines (August 2018)
As the Philippines 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. It's been six months since Opensignal published its State of Mobile Networks: Philippines report, so it's time for our semi-annual update of our results in that country. Analyzing 949 million measurements collected in the 90 days from May 1, 2018, we compared the 3G and 4G results of the Philippines' two mobile operators, Globe Telecom and PLDT's Smart Communications.
- As was the case six months ago, Globe and Smart split our 4G availability and 4G download speed awards. While Smart's lead in LTE download speed is still quite large in our measurements, Globe's lead in 4G availability has shrunk considerably. In our latest test period, Smart closed the gap in 4G availability to less than 4 percentage points. Smart's growth in 4G reach has been quite phenomenal lately. 18 months ago, Smart's 4G availability score languished below 40%.
- We haven't seen much change in our 4G download speed metric for either operator, but overall download speeds have risen considerably, a trend we tracked closely in a recent blog post on the Philippines. In the last 6 months, Globe's average overall download speed has grown nearly 14% to 5 Mbps in our results, while Smart's overall average has grown an impressive 29% to 7.5 Mbps. 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.
- In our 4G latency metric, we saw a rebalancing of the scales. Latency measures a network's response time, with lower scores being better. Smart's 4G latency results suffered over the last six months, increasing by more than 5 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.
Opensignal Awards Table
 | Download Speed: 4G | Download Speed: 3G | Download Speed: Overall | Upload Speed: 4G | Latency: 4G | Latency: 3G | Availability: 4G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Globe |
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Smart |
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Performance by Metric
Download Speed: 4G
Download Speed: 3G
Download Speed: Overall
Upload Speed: 4G
Latency: 4G
Latency: 3G
Availability: 4G
Download Speed: 4G
This metric shows the average download speed for each operator on LTE connections as measured by Opensignal users.
Download Speed: 3G
This metric shows the average download speed for each operator on 3G connections as measured by Opensignal users.
Download Speed: Overall
This metric shows the average download speed experienced by Opensignal users across all of an operator's 3G and 4G networks. Overall speed doesn't just factor in 3G and LTE speeds, but also the availability of each network technology. Operators with lower LTE availability tend to have lower overall speeds because their customers spend more time connected to slower 3G networks.
Upload Speed: 4G
This metric shows the average upload speed for each operator on LTE connections as measured by Opensignal users.
Latency: 4G
This metric shows the average latency for each operator on LTE connections as measured by Opensignal users. Latency, measured in milliseconds, is the delay data experiences as it makes a round trip through the network. A lower score in this metric is a sign of a more responsive network.
Latency: 3G
This metric shows the average latency for each operator on 3G connections as measured by Opensignal users. Latency, measured in milliseconds, is the delay data experiences as it makes a round trip through the network. A lower score in this metric is a sign of a more responsive network.
Availability: 4G
This metric shows the proportion of time Opensignal users have an LTE connection available to them on each operator’s network. It's a measure of how often users can access a 4G network rather than a measure of geographic or population coverage.
Regional Performance
This chart shows the regional winners in each category Opensignal measures. Click on the icons to see a more detailed graph showing each operator’s metrics in a particular region.
Legend:
G
Globe
S
Smart | Region | Download Speed: 4G | Download Speed: 3G | Download Speed: Overall | Upload Speed: 4G | Latency: 4G | Latency: 3G | Availability: 4G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mindanao | |||||||
| NCR | |||||||
| North Central Luzon | |||||||
| South Luzon | |||||||
| Visayas |
Our Methodology
Opensignal measures the real-world experience of consumers on mobile networks as they go about their daily lives. We collect 3 billion individual measurements every day from tens of millions of smartphones worldwide.
Our measurements are collected at all hours of the day, every day of the year, under conditions of normal usage, including inside buildings and outdoors, in cities and the countryside, and everywhere in between. By analyzing on-device measurements recorded in the places where subscribers actually live, work and travel, we report on mobile network service the way users truly experience it.
For this particular report, 949,285,077 datapoints were collected from 76,034 users during the period: 2018-05-01 - 2018-07-29.
We continually adapt our methodology to best represent the changing experience of consumers on mobile networks and, therefore, comparisons of the results to past reports should be considered indicative only. For more information on how we collect and analyze our data, see our methodology page.
For every metric we've calculated statistical confidence intervals and plotted them on all of the graphs. When confidence intervals overlap for a certain metric, our measured results are too close to declare a winner in a particular category. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners.
Opensignal Limited retains ownership of this report including all intellectual property rights, data, content, graphs & analysis. Reports produced by Opensignal Limited may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed, published for any commercial purpose (including use in advertisements or other promotional content) without prior written consent.