Phl among lowest ranked in LTE availability, speed

The Philippines continued to rank among the lowest in terms of Long Term Evolution (LTE) availability and speed, even as there were improvements, according to a report of research firm OpenSignal.

OpenSignal’s The State of LTE for February 2018 report showed the Philippines ranked 75th out of 88 countries in terms of LTE availability.

LTE refers to the fourth generation mobile communications standard which allows users to have data speeds 10 times faster than what is offered by the 3G network.

The latest report showed LTE availability in the Philippines was at 63.73 percent.

This was an improvement compared to the 58.83 percent LTE availability in the Philippines based on a November 2017 report by OpenSignal.

OpenSignal tracks LTE availability based on the proportion of time users have access to a particular network.

In terms of LTE speed, the Philippines placed 85th out of 88 countries, with average download speed of 9.49 Mbps, faster than the 8.24 Mbps average download speed in the November report.

“How fast a country’s 4G speed is can depend on many factors: how much spectrum is devoted to LTE, whether it has adopted new 4G technologies like LTE- Advanced, how densely networks are built and how much congestion is on those networks,” OpenSignal said.

The report said countries with the fastest speeds tend to be the ones that have built LTE-Advanced networks and have a large proportion of LTE-Advanced capable devices.

OpenSignal’s report was based on more than 58 billion measurements collected from Oct. 1 to Dec. 29 last year by more than 3.8 million smartphone and tablet users across six continents.

South Korea remained on top of the list in terms of 4G availability at 97.49 percent, followed by Japan with 94.70 percent and Norway which came in third with 92.16 percent.

Meanwhile, Algeria had the lowest 4G availability at 40.94 percent.

As for 4G speed, Singapore ranked first with average download speed of 44.31 Mbps, while the Netherlands came in second with 42.12 Mbps and Norway on the third spot with 41.20 Mbps.

India, on the other hand, had the slowest average 4G download speed at 6.07 Mbps.