The Philippines Has Third Slowest 5G Speed in Asia Pacific, Report Says

In a ranking of the fastest 5G speeds in Asia Pacific, the Philippines may not be the worst, but we’re close to the bottom. 

The Philippines ranked eighth out of the 10 countries surveyed In mobile analytics company OpenSignal’s latest report, “Benchmarking the 5G Experience - Asia Pacific.”

With 5G download speed at 136.6 Mbps, the Philippines just edged out ninth placer Hong Kong. It’s also double the speed from 10th placer and late 5G adopter Indonesia. 

South Korea led the region in 5G download speed with 438 Mbps, followed by Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Japan, and Thailand. 

However, it’s not all bad news for the Philippines. In terms of uplift, or the migration from 4G to 5G, the Philippines had the best performance. 

“The Philippines saw the greatest uplift when we compare the 5G and 4G mobile network experience,” the report said. “Impressively, the average 5G download speeds seen by our users were 8.9 times faster than average 4G speeds in the Philippines. On mobile video streaming, Filipino users enjoyed a 33 percent higher Video Experience score using 5G versus 4G.”

In the uplift ranking, the Philippines scored better than Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, and lastly, Japan. 

The country meanwhile ranked seventh in terms of 5G availability, or the percentage of time the service is available, according to the Opensignal report.

“[T]he numerous islands and challenging interior of the Philippines also mean that the scores of 11.1 percent and 3.7 are similarly impressive,” the report said about 5G availability. 

South Korea was number one in this ranking, posting an “excellent” score of 30.7 percent. 

“5G continues to mature as a technology as operators expand the extent of their 5G services,” OpenSignal said. “Either by boosting the geographic reach, or by deploying 5G on new spectrum bands that improve speed and capacity — if mid or higher frequency — or by boosting in-building signal propagation and rural reach through the use of lower frequency bands for 5G.”