PH internet still ASEAN’s slowest; are we making progress?

It has been around five months already since we reported Philippine internet speeds being the slowest in ASEAN. Since then, the issue has caught a lot of attention causing senate hearings & probing.Upon checking into Ookla’s Net Index, we can see that not much has changed.

Net Index’s data, analyzed between August 27 & September 25 this year, reports that the Philippines has an average download speed of 3.5 mbps and an upload speed of 1.4 mbps as of writing – for broadband users. One thing to note though is that the average mobile internet speed is slightly higher at 3.6 & 1.7 mbps respectively – which is understandable given the trends of mobile internet.

As we’ve said, there have been calls to probing and senate hearings, and so far, we’ve gotten a lot of statements on the issue. A lot of pressure is put on PLDT for not allowing IP peering, so for one case, PLDT blames abusive users for slow internet speeds and for another case, blames Filipinos’ preference for websites in English language. A lot of discussion is still going on between the government & the telcos, most of it concerning IP peering, misleading advertisements and the like. On the other hand, the NTC has already proposed a higher budget for faster internet.

So far, it looks like one of the best solutions being pushed right now is IP peering, but we still have no idea if it will all lead to this. There’s a good discussion about this on Reddit, but we have also discussed the causes and possible solutions in the past to expensive but slow Philippine internet in the following articles below:

• Why do Filipinos pay more for slower internet?
• Call to Action: How we can push for faster PH internet

Right now, all we have to do is to keep the fire burning. We shouldn’t let this issue just die down and be forgotten. The system needs to either allow foreign investments by abolishing 60/40, be more strict with torrent downloads, inspire competition and have companies & the government invest on infrastructure – or a combination of all.

However, all of this won’t happen if we don’t push for progress. Do you think we’ll make progress?

{Net Index}