The National Telecommunications Commission said Tuesday the mobile and fixed broadband services of PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. improved substantially between July and November this year.
NTC Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba said based on Ookla Speedtest Result, the country’s fixed download speed increased 262.7 percent in November to 28.69 megabits per second from 7.91 Mbps in July.
The mobile download speed also rose 148.52 percent to 18.49 Mbps in November from 7.44 Mbps in July 2016.
Cordoba said despite the improvement in services, the NTC was still considering an increase in penalty on telecom companies from P200 per violation a day to P2 million per violation a day.
“We are also pushing for the start of the commercial operations of DITO Telecommunity in the first quarter of 2021 to force existing telcos to further improve its services and invest more,” he said.
“DITO is very aggressive,” Cordoba said.
Cordoba said the agency was also proposing to include fiber optic cable in the streamlining of permits to speed up the construction.
Globe Telecom president and chief executive Ernest Cu said the company would invest about P70 billion next year, higher from this year’s P50 billion.
“We will ramp up our investments to put up more than 2.5-times fiber to homes and over 2,000 new cell sites,” he said.
Globe will also aggressively roll out 5G to more cities and municipalities, he said.
Smart president and PLDT chief revenue officer Al Panlilio said they would invest more to improve mobile and fixed broadband services. “We will not stop investing,” he said.
“We are targeting to elevate the mobile standard in the Philippines to global standard,” Panlilio said.
PLDT plans to increase the minimum average mobile speed to 30 Mbps next year and 60 Mbps by 2025. It also expects to increase minimum average broadband speed to 20 Mbps.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a news briefing Filipino consumers wanted world-class telecom services. He said the fact that the Philippines ranked 34th in Asia in terms of telecom service meant the local sector could not be considered world-class.
“At 34th in Asia, I don’t think we are world-class,” Roque said.
The Philippines’ fixed broadband speed was ranked 32nd in Asia as of October, while its mobile internet speed ranked 34th out of 50 countries in the region.
The report also showed that the Philippines’ internet speed was just a tenth of Singapore’s 229.42 Mbps for fixed broadband and 64 mbps speed for mobile.
President Rodrigo Duterte earlier ordered telecom companies to “improve the services before December.”