Philippine 4G availability, improved speed, but still near bottom of rankings — OpenSignal

THE Philippine telecommunication system improved in terms of fourth-generation mobile (4G) availability and speed but still placed near bottom in global rankings, a report by a Londonbased company said.

In a report by wireless coverage mapping company OpenSignal, “The State of LTE [long-term evolution]”, the Philippines ranked 75th out of 88 in 4G availability, and 85th out of 88 in 4G speed. The survey analyzed 50 billion measurements collected in the fourth quarter covering 88 countries.

The Philippines recorded a 63.73% availability rate, up from 58.83% in the July to October period. OpenSignal defines 4G availability as the “proportion of times” a user can access a network. This then means that users were able to latch onto an LTE signal in six out of 10 attempts.

Countries at the top of the availability table are South Korea ( 97.49%), Japan ( 94.70%), and the US (86.94%), while at the bottom were Algeria ( 40.94%), El Salvador (40.70%), and Ecuador (46.07%).

The Philippines’ LTE speed averaged 9.48 Mbps, against 8.24 Mbps in the last testing period. Recording top speeds are Singapore (44.31 Mbps) the Netherlands (42.12) and Norway (41.20) while at the bottom of the table were India (6.07 Mbps), Algeria (8.65 Mbps), and Indonesia (8.92 Mbps).

OpenSignal said that a country’s 4G speed depends on many factors, like amount of spectrum devoted to LTE, adoption of new 4G technologies like LTE Advanced, density of networks, and level of congestion in the networks, but presence of new technologies and number of devices capable of handling the technologies were seen driving fast LTE speeds.

Availability improved in top countries. “Consumers in five countries had access to an LTE connection more than 90% of the time — up from a mere two countries just three months ago,” OpenSignal said.

The company said that the industry is still waiting for speeds above 50 Mbps.

“For the last several State of LTE Reports, OpenSignal has found that in the fastest countries average LTE download speeds have stalled at just over 45 Mbps. The industry is still waiting on that spark that will push speeds beyond 50 Mbps on a national level,” OpenSignal said. —