Philippines

Smart is still the operator to beat when it comes to Video Experience. The operator’s score increased 15.6% over our last report, when it had a score of 47.6, to reach a score of 55 (on a scale of 0-100), which puts it in the Fair category. That means video experience for users is acceptable at lower resolutions. Globe, meanwhile, saw its Video Experience score increase 30.6% from our September report for a score of 39.8, just 0.3 points shy of the Fair category. That score still puts it in the Poor category, which means its users find streaming video nearly unwatchable.

Turning to video user experience on just the 4G network, Smart’s 4G-only Video Experience score is 62.4 (on a 0-100 scale), 7.4 points higher than its overall score, and that puts it into the Good category for Video Experience, which means users experience faster loading and less stuttering, even at higher resolutions. Globe’s 4G-only Video Experience is just 3.9 points better than its overall score of 39.8, giving it a score of 43.7. That moves it into the Fair category, which means the video experience for users is acceptable at lower resolutions.

Opensignal measured the gaming experience in the Philippines for the first time and we learned that playing multiplayer games in the Philippines is challenging. Smart won our first-ever award with a score of 36.9 on a scale of 0-100, which falls into the Very Poor category. This means the majority of users found the gaming experience to be in need of improvement with too noticeable delays within games and where players often didn’t feel like they had full control over the gameplay. In poor network conditions, mobile multiplayer games’ AI often steps in automatically to reduce some of the apparent negative impacts for users. Globe also placed in the Very Poor category with a lower score of 35.9.

Opensignal’s newly released Games Experience metric measures how mobile users experience real-time multiplayer mobile gaming on an operator’s network. Like our other experiential metrics, it is measured on a scale of 0-100. It was developed from several years of research looking at the relationship between the technical network parameters and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users. These parameters include latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (the proportion of data packets that never reach their destination). Additionally, it considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions. The games tested include some of the most popular real-time multiplayer mobile games — such as Call of Duty and Arena of Valor — played around the world.

Voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger are becoming more popular thanks to ubiquitous mobile broadband. These apps offer a new way for users to talk to each other and Opensignal is now measuring the quality of our users’ experience on these apps.

In our first-ever Voice App Experience award for the Philippines, both Smart and Globe would benefit from some improvement in this area. Smart was the winner of this category with a score of 64.8 on a scale of 0-100, while Globe was slightly behind with a score of 64. Both of these scores fall into the Very Poor category (60-66), which means there’s a lot of opportunity for the operators to reduce call quality impairments such as distortion, clicking sounds and silence.

In addition to the Voice App Experience metric, Opensignal also reported on two supporting measurements related to the voice app — the 4G Voice App Experience and the 3G Voice App Experience. As their names suggest, they measure the quality of experience for Opensignal users on an operator’s LTE and 3G networks, respectively.

In the 4G Voice App Experience category Smart earned a score of 68.5 and Globe scored 67.6. Both of these scores fall into the Poor ranking (66-74) on a scale of 0-100. These scores are much higher than the 3G Voice Experience, indicating the importance for operators of extending the reach of their 4G networks and boosting 4G Availability.

Not surprisingly, both operators’ rankings dropped in the 3G Voice App Experience category. Globe ranked first with a score of 55.1 followed by Smart with 54.3.

Smart and Globe both made some strides in Download Speed Experience. Smart won this category with users experiencing an overall download speed of 10.6 Mbps, that is a 12.8% increase over the 9.4 Mbps speed that we reported last September. It was also 3 Mbps faster than its rival Globe. Our users on Globe’s network reported download speeds of 7.6 Mbps, an increase from the 6.5 Mbps we reported in our last report.

When we look at Download Speed Experience by technology type, Smart is also ahead in terms of 4G Download Speed with a score of 13.1 Mbps. Globe’s 4G speeds are lower at 9.3 Mbps.

Smart also dominates in Upload Speed Experience. Our users on Smart’s network on average achieved upload speeds of 3.9 Mbps, which puts Smart in first place. This is a slight increase from our last report when we clocked Smart’s upload speeds at 3.3 Mbps. Globe came in second with our users clocking an upload speed of 2.0 Mbps, an increase from 1.7 Mbps in our September report. Despite both operators’ improvements in upload speed, they are still well below the speeds we see in most developed markets, which are typically more than 10 Mbps.

When we break down 3G versus 4G connections, we find our users on Smart averaged 5.0 Mbps in the 4G upload speeds they experience, which is still significantly faster than our users on Globe, who experienced 4G Upload Speeds of 2.7 Mbps. When connecting on 3G networks from Smart and Globe, our users saw extremely slow upload speeds of 0.8 Mbps and 0.3 Mbps, respectively.

Latency Experience is one area where the difference in experience between both operators is nearly non-existent. Globe and Smart tied in this category, with Globe having an average overall response time of 60.7 milliseconds, which is an improvement of 3.5ms from its score of 64.2 in our September report. Meanwhile, Smart had a latency score of 59.8ms, which is an improvement of 2.1ms from our last report.

In the 4G latency scores there is a slightly wider gap between the two operators, with Smart earning a latency score of 51.9ms and Globe scoring a latency of 50.5ms. Latency is an increasingly important metric because lower latency scores mean less lag time when using real-time applications.

Both operators have now passed the 75% mark in 4G Availability. In our last report, Globe was the only operator to do so and was slightly ahead of Smart with a score of 75.3% compared to Smart’s score of 74.3% .However, this time Smart took first place with a score of 81.8%. This means that our 4G users were able to access a 4G connection on Smart’s 4G network 81.8% of the time. Globe followed closely with a score of 77.8%.

The competition in this metric has been interesting to watch as in our last report Globe was slightly ahead of Smart with a score of 75.3% compared to Smart’s score of 74.3%.