Opensignal: Internet Speed in the Philippines Has Improved, But Still Not Enough

Internet speeds in the Philippines have seen “impressive improvements” since the start of the new administration, but it’s not enough to make any impact versus other Southeast Asian markets, a new report from an independent analytics company showed. 

According to the Opensignal report, average download speed in the Philippines is at 21.6 Mbps. For comparison, regional leader Singapore is at 70.6 Mbps, followed by Malaysia at 32.2 Mbps, and Vietnam at 24.9 Mbps.

“Despite our Filipino users observing an increase of 5.9 Mbps (37.7 percent) in their average overall download speeds, the Philippines has gone from third place to fourth, as it has been overtaken by Malaysia — which has achieved an impressive burst of speed,” the report said. “Malaysia’s Download Speed Experience score rose by 17.7Mbps (122.6 percent), putting it in second place and behind Singapore. Cambodian users saw the second largest percentage increase in their average download speeds (46.1 percent), followed by Singapore (41 percent) and Indonesia (40.6 percent).”

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Opensignal noted that both Vietnam and Cambodia have yet to officially launch 5G commercial services. 

“The same cannot be said of the Philippines as both Globe and Smart have been providing their users with mobile 5G services for years and new entrant Dito has a live service in some regions,” Opensignal said. 

However, the Philippines still placed last in terms of upload speed at 5 Mbps. 

No longer last in availability 

On the other hand, the Philippines is no longer last-placed in the region for Availability, or the proportion of time that users spend with a 3G or better connection. The country moved up two spots after improving its availability score by a few percentage points to 95.3 percent. Thailand (99.3 percent) and Singapore (99.2 percent) almost tied at first place, followed by Malaysia and Indonesia. 

“Good mobile connectivity is of increasing importance to the Marcos administration as the government has recently launched the eGov PH Super App, which is digitizing and streamlining national and local government services,” Opensignal said. 

The streamlined process of permitting for telecommunications infrastructure has helped in pushing for better availability of telco services in the country, the report added.

Better gaming experience 

In terms of gaming, Opensignal said “observed the largest improvement in their experience when playing multiplayer mobile games over cellular connections across the markets analyzed.” 

The Philippines’ score rose 13.6 points or an equivalent of 28.8 percent, well ahead of Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand, which saw increases of 11.6  points or 18.4 percent, 7.3 points or 16.3 percent and 7.8 points or 12 percent, respectively. 

Despite the improvements, Opensignal notes that there is still a lot of room for growth in the Philippine telecom market, especially in terms of user experience. 

“As digitization and mobile experience go hand-in-hand—the Philippines needs to be competitive with other countries in the region on mobile connectivity,” Opensignal said. “However, in our previous analyses, we’ve highlighted that much of the Philippines’ forward momentum has been driven by the country’s operators’ high capital expenditure, which they have started to rein in. The Marcos Administration will therefore need to incentivize operators to continue investing significantly in their networks if the President’s digitization goals are to become a reality.”