Philippines

Smart's lengthy struggle to catch up with Globe in 4G reach is over. In our most recent test period, Smart closed the already-dwindling gap between itself and Globe in our 4G Availability metric, producing a two-way tie for our award in the category. Smart's progress in just six months is impressive. Its 4G Availability grew by nearly 7 percentage points, which is a good indication of new network expansion. Globe, however, wasn't sitting still. Its 4G Availability also increased significantly in our measurements, but Globe's 4 percentage points of growth weren't enough to hold off Smart's resurgence.

Both operators now have 4G Availability scores greater than 70% in our analysis, which is a marked improvement in their level of LTE access. In our March 2017 report, Globe's 4G Availability score was 55.3% while Smart's was a lowly 40%. The rapid rise in their scores in just two years shows that their LTE services are maturing as more consumers have access to 4G services more often.

Video Experience in the Philippines is definitely in need of improvement. In our recent State of Mobile Video report, the Philippines had the lowest overall Video Experience score on the 69 countries we analyzed. That indicates mobile video quality in the Philippines is Poor, suffering from long load times and frequent stalling even at low resolutions. But within the Philippines there was a clear distinction between the two national operators in our Video Experience measurements.

Globe garnered a Video Experience score of 28.4 (out of 100), putting it in line with the Philippines overall Poor rating (0-40), but Smart's score of 44.4 elevated the operator into the Fair range (40-55), meaning video experienced shorter load times and fewer playback interruptions, especially at lower resolutions. Smart still needs to gain a lot of ground before it earns a Good or Very Good rating, but it's clearly delivering a much better Video Experience than its rival, according to our analysis.

Mobile broadband speeds are improving in the Philippines, though average connections are still well below most of the developed world. In the last six months, we have measured a big jump in Smart's Download Speed Experience score, rising from 7.5 Mbps to 9 Mbps. Globe's increase in this metric was smaller, from 5 Mbps to 5.5 Mbps, but the general trend in download speed is encouraging. As with our other speed metrics, though, Smart clearly has the upper hand in Download Speed Experience, and it's continuing to widen the gap with Globe in our measurements.

When we look at the breakdown of speed by technology, we see that the big boost in Download Speed Experience isn't the result of more powerful network connections. 4G Download Speeds for both operators have remained relatively unchanged. Rather, Globe and Smart's improved 4G Availability is causing overall download speeds to rise. While the speed of 4G connections may not have changed, our users on Filipino networks are finding those connections more often.

In Upload Speed Experience, we see another example of Smart's growing lead in our speed metrics. Our analysis found Smart's average overall LTE upload speed was 3.2 Mbps, which was almost double Globe's score of 1.7 Mbps. Upload speed is becoming a more prominent indicator of network capabilities as social media and communications apps emphasize symmetrical connectivity to the internet.

Often overlooked, latency is an increasingly important measure of a network's capabilities, affecting the user experience in many subtle ways. The lower the Latency Experience score on a network, the better the experience on a host of mobile applications and services, from web browsing to voice-over-IP to real-time multiplayer gaming.

Smart won our Latency Experience award with an average response time of 69.4 milliseconds across its 3G and 4G networks, though Globe wasn't far behind with a Latency Experience score of 74.6 milliseconds.