Smart leads in latest OpenSignal report (September 2019)

OpenSignal has published Mobile Network Experience Report for September 2019, showing the performance of both Smart Communications and Globe Telecom in five key areas: 4G availability, Video Experience, Download Speed Experience, Upload Speed Experience, and Latency Experience. These statistics were done in 19 regions.

As of September, Smart took the lead on 4 out of 5 metrics, with 4G availability being tied with Globe. The breakdown is as follows:

4G Availability

According to the report, Globe’s 4G network is available in 75.3% of the country while Smart’s 4G network is available in 74.3%. Both networks have improved by roughly 3% in this area.

Video Experience

Using OpenSignal‘s metric, Smart scored 47.6 points out of 100 while Globe is trailing behind at 30.4 points. While both networks’ overall performance remains poor in OpenSignal’s metrics, Smart’s 4G scored 57.7 points which give it a good rating while Globe only scored 35 points.

Download Speed Experience

In OpenSignal’s testing, Smart achieved an average download speed of 9.4 mbps while Globe has an average download speed of 6.5 Mbps. Both networks improved greatly in this regard with Globe gaining an additional 1.5 mbps compared to last year’s report and Smart gaining 1.9mbps.

When considering only 4G network, Smart achieved a download speed of 12.7 Mbps while Globe can only get 8.3 Mbps. Alarmingly, Smart was slower by 0.3 Mbps compared to last year’s report, while Globe became faster by 1 Mbps. Both companies’ 3G speeds were nearly identical with Smart and Globe achieving 3.1 and 2.9 Mbps respectively.

Upload Speed Experience

In this metric, Smart almost doubled Globe’s average upload speed at 3.3 Mbps and 1.7 Mbps respectively. The same goes for 4G and 3G networks with Smart achieving 4.6 and 0.7 mbps compared to Globe’s 2.3 and 0.3 Mbps on the different networks.

Latency Experience

Here, we can see that Smart’s network is faster at 61.9ms compared to Globe’s 64.2ms, although the gap between the two is closer than the other metrics. Using 4G network, the difference between the two is negligible; with Globe scoring 51.1ms and Smart at 50.6ms. However, at 3G Smart is clearly faster – being able to achieve a latency of 83.5ms and Globe at 90.8ms.

Regional Analysis

The regional analysis was mostly in line with the overall results. The only notable variance was Smart’s Download Speed Experience of 15 Mbps in Metro Manila, while only achieving 3 Mbps in Benguet.

You can read OpenSignal’s full report here.