A recent report shows that Smart once again dominated the latest Opensignal awards in mobile network experience. The PLDT mobile network subsidiary won six out of the seven categories, and tied in the Latency Experience.
Notably, the said report reveals that Smart has beaten Globe by a slim margin in terms of 4G availability. According to Opensignal, Smart has increased by 7.5 percentage points in the past six months. Coming from 74.3%, it now has an 81.8% score. Meanwhile, its rival Globe has also increased its percentage score to 77.8%, giving Smart a four-point lead.
Aside from the 4G availability, the research also included a new metric called Games Experience. This metric measures user experiences in live multiplayer mobile games on a network operator. Only by a small difference, Smart won this category with a score of 36.9 on a 0-100 scale over the 35.9 score of Globe.
Moreover, Opensignal said that Smart’s Download Speed increased to 10.6Mbps from 9.4Mbps in September, making it 3Mbps faster than that of Globe. On the other hand, Smart’s Upload Speed reached 3.9Mbps, still faster than 2Mbps of its rival.
Related: Filipinos are spending 13.4% more time on WiFi than usual — OpenSignal
In terms of Video Experience, Smart has once again won over Globe. The latter received a score of 55 (on 0-100 scale) which considers it in the Fair category, while Globe received a 39.8 score. It is commendable that Globe has improved in this category by 9.4 points. Unfortunately, this still leaves Globe at the lower category.
Sadly, both telcos performed badly in Voice App Experience as they both scored Very Poor. This metric measures the quality of over-the-top (OTT) voice apps like Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger.
The study also noted that despite only having two mobile network operators, the Philippine mobile market continues to grow and improve.
Opensignal, however, mentioned that a change is likely to happen with the entrance of the third telecommunications company, Dito Telecommunity. Dito plans to cover 37% of the population in its first year with an average speed of 27Mbps. Its initial launch is on March 2021, wherein its license agreement indicates that it must cover 84% of the population with an average speed of at least 55 Mbps.
The research dated from November 1, 2019 to January 29, 2020 and used 288,492 devices with more than 600 million total measurements.
So, what do you think of the results? Do you agree with it?