Consumer advocacy group CitizenWatch Philippines on Monday called on regulators and internet service providers to shift their focus from headline broadband speeds to overall quality of service, saying Filipino users value reliability and consistency more than high speed figures.
In a statement, CitizenWatch said most consumer complaints about internet services stem from unstable connections rather than insufficient speed.
These include dropped calls during online meetings, mobile data failures in crowded areas, disrupted digital payments, and service outages during bad weather.
“When we are online, we don’t have an internet speedometer in our face to constantly show us the connection speeds of our ISP,” said CitizenWatch Philippines lead convenor Orlando Oxales.
“People notice it when calls are dropped, when data service suddenly slows or vanishes, or when transactions don’t push through.”
Oxales said the growing dependence on digital platforms for remote work, online education, e-wallets, and government services makes broadband reliability more critical than raw speed.
The group cited a 2025 study by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) titled “Towards Better Mobile Quality of Service in Asia Pacific: Assessing the Role of Regulation.”
The study said improving network performance requires coordinated action by both operators and policymakers and warned that an overemphasis on speed targets may fail to reflect actual user experience.
According to Oxales, the GSMA study shows that most everyday online activities function well at speeds of around 10 Mbps, provided connections are stable, particularly during peak hours.
The report also distinguishes between “quality of service,” which refers to a network’s technical performance, and “quality of experience,” which reflects how users perceive connectivity.
Oxales said this distinction is especially relevant in the Philippines due to dense urban areas, remote islands, difficult terrain, and frequent typhoons.
He added that service quality is affected by factors such as power interruptions, fiber cable theft, right-of-way issues, and delays in permitting broadband infrastructure projects—factors not captured by speed metrics alone.
CitizenWatch also noted projections that mobile data usage per connection in ASEAN could increase nearly fourfold by 2030, driven by video streaming, digital payments, work applications, and emerging artificial intelligence tools.
The GSMA study further found that rigid regulations focused narrowly on speed have shown limited success in improving real-world performance and may divert resources from network upgrades to regulatory compliance.
“Consumer protection is not about chasing the fastest possible speed,” Oxales said. “It is about setting realistic standards, removing barriers to infrastructure rollout, and building networks that remain reliable when people need them most.”
