Filipinos’ time on Wi-Fi at home increased significantly during the implementation of enhanced community quarantine to contain the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, and marked the highest increase among neighboring Asian countries, according to mobile analytics firm OpenSignal.
OpenSignal said in a report the time on Wi-Fi in the Philippines rose 13.4 percent week-on-week to 63 percent in the third week of March from 55.8 percent from March 9 to March 15.
“This was the largest week-on-week increase we observed across all the Asian countries that we are tracking,” OpenSignal said.
This was followed by Australia with 52.4 percent, Malaysia with 30.5 percent and Thailand with 41.5 percent.
“To put this in perspective, we only observed higher increases in Peru and Spain—20.4 percent and 16.8 percent, respectively,” it said.
Opensignal said it also detected a statistically significant week-on-week increase in the percentage of time smartphone users in the Philippines spent on Wi-Fi in the second week of March—an increase of 4.2 percent which caused it to rise to 55.8 percent.
PLDT Inc. earlier said data traffic grew by around 15 percent to 20 percent under ECQ, while mobile data usage also increased along with voice calls and short messaging service.
PLDT said the fixed and mobile networks of PLDT and Smart have the capacity to handle the increased traffic in data, calls and SMS.
Globe Telecom Inc. also assured the public it has enough capacity to handle the surge in data traffic during the ECQ.
