ACTING Palace spokesperson Harry Roque on Friday gave assurances the government was on its way to improve poor telecoms service, after the Philippines placed 69th out of 77 countries in terms of LTE availability, according to research firm OpenSignal’s The State of LTE November 2017 report.
In an interview, Roque said that President Rodrigo Duterte has already met with foreign investors in attempts to improve the “very bad” mobile phone service and crawling Internet speeds in the country.
LTE is an abbreviation for Long Term Evolution, a 4G wireless communications standard developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) that’s designed to provide up to 10x the speeds of 3G networks for mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, netbooks, notebooks and wireless hotspots.
Speaking over the phone, Roque noted that the poor telecommunications service in the country had been affecting his performance as Duterte’s spokesperson.
Roque made these pronouncements as the Philippines ranked close to the bottom in terms of LTE availability and speed, according to research firm OpenSignal.
LTE availability in the Philippines was at 58.83 percent—an improvement compared to the Philippines’ LTE availability of 52.77 percent in OpenSignal’s June 2017 report.
But in terms of LTE speed, the Philippines ranked 74th out of 77 countries, with an average download speed of 8.24 megabits per second (Mbps), slower than the country’s average download speed of 8.59 Mbps recorded in the June report.
LTE is the type of 4G—or fourth generation mobile type of technology—that delivers the fastest connection for a mobile internet experience—up to 10 times faster than 3G.
OpenSignal said global average for LTE downloads went up slightly in the last six months to 16.6 Mbps from 16.2 Mbps.
South Korea topped the list in terms of LTE availability at 96.69 percent, while Japan came in second with 94.11 percent and Norway placed third with 88.66 percent.
On the other hand, Algeria had the lowest 4G availability at 41.50 percent.
In terms of LTE speed, Singapore was the leader with an average download speed of 46.64 Mbps, followed by South Korea with 45.85 Mbps and Norway with 42.02 Mbps.
India, meanwhile, had the lowest LTE speed at 6.13 Mbps. John Paolo Bencito
The President earlier said he was planning to allow four to six foreign Internet service providers to break the country’s telecommunications duopoly in a bid to promote greater competition for faster Internet services.
The President stressed that the telco duopoly could have been disadvantageous to the public, since the two dominant players “can always go into a cabal” and do a “cartel” on market prices and services.
