THE entry of DITO Telecommunity Corp., the introduction of 5G, and pressure from the government pushed telecommunications companies’ investments in their networks, said Opensignal.
“However, such programs take place over a number of years and it can take time for the competitive landscape to shift,” Opensignal said, as it looked across published mobile network experience reports to show how each operator’s position has changed over time.
It said DITO has been making its presence felt as it won four awards in the analytics company’s latest report, namely: upload speed experience, availability, excellent consistent quality, and core consistent quality.
In the same report, Globe Telecom, Inc. has won seven awards, including six in experiential categories.
“However, it is DITO, not Globe, that is giving Smart Communications, Inc. reason for concern in the Download Speed Experience category, despite Smart having won this award outright for the past 12 reports in a row,” said Opensignal.
The analytics company said its last report showed that DITO is only 2.6 megabytes per second (Mbps) behind Smart in terms of download speed. Smart led the download speed experience at 25.3 Mbps, followed by DITO at 22.8 Mbps, and Globe at 16.2 Mbps.
Meanwhile, Globe was said to have made significant gains in games experience after it won the award with a score of 58.8 points, or higher by 1.2 points than Smart’s 57.6 points.
“One factor that has played a role in Globe’s recent success is that it made its largest-ever annual investment in its mobile and fixed networks in 2022,” Opensignal said.
In 2022, Globe claimed to have activated a total of 1,702 new cell sites, upgraded around 13,600 to 4G, and installed 2,267 new 5G sites nationwide.
“However, Globe is now looking to spend 30% less on capital expenditure (capex) in 2023 at $1.3 billion with the goal of reducing it further in 2024,” Opensignal said, adding that this is similar to Smart’s parent firm PLDT Inc., which is reducing capex to P85 billion in 2023.
“Meanwhile, DITO expects to spend P27 billion or $487 million on its network this year, which would take its total network spend to around P230 billion by the end of the year,” it said. — Justine Irish D. Tabile