The Philippines’ mobile internet speed broke the top 100 as it jumped to 111th to 86th spot in January 2021 from the same period last year, according to a report obtained from global internet testing leader Ookla.
The latest data from Ookla—a web service that provides free analysis of Internet access performance metrics —revealed that the Philippines' ranking in terms of mobile internet speeds is up by 10 spots from December, even beating Russia, Malaysia, Peru and Jordan.
Ookla's Mobile internet speed test covers 140 nations.
Ookla revealed that the local telco space recorded an average download mobile internet speed of up to 25.77 megabits per second (Mbps), while the average upload speed, meanwhile, was at 6.29 Mbps.
The steady climb was also noted in December when the Philippines saw its ranking up by 14 spots in the same category.
For Fixed Broadband, the country kept its 100th spot out of 175 countries last month.
Download speed was at 32.73 Mbps in January, while upload speed reached 31.64 Mbps.
The government has been assisting telcos in their network buildup through the strict implementation of the Ease of Doing Business Act or the Republic Act 11032.
The government has cut the processing of securing permits for the deployment of towers, with the National Telecommunications Commission reporting that in 2019, a monthly average of 63 permits were issued for Globe and a monthly average of 50 for Smart. However, the average monthly number of permits issued on July to December 2020 rose by 552.65% (348 permits) for Globe and 194.33% (97 permits) for Smart.
The fast-tracking of the issuance of permits resulted in an increase in building cellular towers. From July to December 2020, a total of 2,939 additional towers/physical sites were built.
The country has a total of 22,834 cellular towers/sites to date with Globe having 10,395, Smart and DITO having 10,079 and 2,360 respectively.
