Barely five months before the end of the term of President Rodrigo R. Duterte, the Philippines now ranks 63rd out of 178 countries and 65th out of 138 countries according to Ookla’s fixed broadband and mobile global performance figures, respectively.
The average fixed broadband download speeds have risen from 7.91 Mbps to 82.61 Mbps, a 944% growth that propelled Philippines’ latest Speedtest Global ranking 113 rungs up, from 176th before the start of the Duterte administration to 63rd.
The country’s average mobile internet speeds have also seen an impressive 467% growth at 42.22 Mbps from 7.44 Mbps since the start of the Duterte administration.
In a statement, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) wrote: “the increase in internet speed in the country was the result of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s directive last year for telcos to improve their services amid the pandemic and of the strengthened roll-out of DICT’s digital connectivity initiatives, especially the Common Tower Policy.”
The National Telecommunications Commission also attributed the record-breaking improvement in the internet speeds from 2020 to 2021 especially in contrast to previous year-over-year performances to President Duterte’s directive to fast-track the issuance of local government unit (LGU) permits.
The streamlined issuance of LGU permits enabled telecommunication companies to also fast-track the building of cellular towers and fiber optic networks essential to boost internet connectivity and other telco services amid the pandemic, it added.
Ookla recently announced that it will no longer use mean data in the determination of its rankings on the Speedtest Global Index after February 15, 2022, and will replace it with median download speed “to best reflect the speeds a user is likely to achieve in a market.”
