Philippines has slowest, poorest mobile LTE connection, says report

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines is the country with the slowest connection and poorest coverage of LTE in the world, a phone application that measures internet speed said in a report.

According to the February 2014 report “State of the LTE” by OpenSignal Inc., the Philippines has the slowest LTE or Long Term Evolution connection among the 16 countries surveyed, with 5.3 Mbps (megabits per second), only next to the US with 6.5 Mpbs.

“Australia has the fastest average LTE speeds in the world, with the USA and the Philippines coming in the slowest of our qualifying countries,” the report read.

Among the networks, Globe Telecom and Smart Communications have one of the poorest coverage and slowest connection of LTE in the survey.

Globe Philippines was even described as “the worst performing network…” according to the study.

“The South Korean and Hong Kong networks perform extremely well for both metrics… Globe Philippines is the worst performing network,” the study read.

In terms of download speed, Smart is the slowest at 4.3 Mbps. Globe has 6.3 Mbps.

Smart is the fifth slowest and Globe is at seventh, relatively faster than the LTE connection in four telecommunication networks in the US.

In terms of coverage, or the  proportion of time a user has access to LTE, the Philippines is the lowest among the 16 countries surveyed, with an average user having LTE access only 38 percent of the time.

Globe has the poorest LTE coverage among the 38 telecommunication networks worldwide, with its average user having LTE access only 38 percent of the time.

Smart, meanwhile, is the sixth with poorest coverage at 46 percent.

Reached for comment, Smart public affairs head Ramon Isberto told INQUIRER.net in a text message that they would have to read the report before commenting. Globe corporate communications head Yolanda Crisanto could not be reached as of posting time.

The study was based on data from the 6 million users of the application, OpenSignal said.

Australia is the country with the fastest LTE at 24.5 Mbps while Claro Brazil is the fastest LTE network at 27.8 Mbps.

South Korea has the best LTE coverage at 91 percent while Tele2 Sweden is the network with best coverage at 93 percent.
LTE or Long Term Evolution is designed to be 10 times the speed of its 3G counterparts for mobile devices, according to Mashable.com.

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