Twenty-three-year-old Gerric Ann Mabbun is an account manager by day, and a movie enthusiast by night. All throughout the pandemic, she has stayed connected digitally with co-workers, and found a means of relief by streaming all her favourite K-dramas online.
Mabbun, a PLDT Home Fibr customer for three years now, attests that the fiber connectivity has given her a sense of normalcy. “Streaming on YouTube, Netflix, and other VOD platforms is mostly a smooth and uninterrupted experience,” said Mabbun. “It is very rare for us to experience no connection or even suffer from lag and buffering. The speed is superb.”
PLDT in May emerged in the top spot for Netflix’s ISP Speed Index, providing the best video streaming experience to Filipinos. The Netflix ISP Speed Index measures primetime Netflix performance on internet service providers (ISPs) worldwide.
PLDT has fast-tracked its fiber roll out nationwide, further enabling the delivery of faster internet speeds and seamless video experience to customers.
“We will never stop innovating, as we aim to help elevate the country’s overall speeds, taking the Philippines to global heights,” says PLDT, Inc. and Smart Communications President and CEO Alfredo S. Panlilio. “Citations received from three reputable third party award-giving bodies are a true testament of our unrelenting work to deliver the best experience our customers deserve. We will continue to benchmark against global telcos. By doing this, we are not just improving PLDT and Smart but also the internet speed of the Philippines.”
For their efforts at elevating the country’s internet speeds, PLDT and Smart have been hailed by third-party analytics firms like Ookla and Opensignal.
Ookla, the global leader in internet testing and analysis, named PLDT and Smart as the country’s fastest fixed and mobile data network in the second half of 2020 based on customer-initiated tests taken with Speedtest for Q3-Q4 2020. Ookla has also cited Smart as the country’s fastest mobile data network for three years in a row now.
On the other hand, Smart also recently scored a rare sweep in the April 2021 Philippines Mobile Network Experience Awards* by independent analytics firm Opensignal, beating the competition across all metrics in three essential aspects of service: Coverage (4G Coverage Experience, 4G Availability), Speed (Download and Upload Speed) and Experience (Games, Video and Voice App). This is the first time an operator in the Philippines won decisively in all categories.
Smart also received the top award from international internet testing organization umlaut, the global benchmarking company formerly known as P3. Smart received the ‘Best in Test’ award and was recognized for delivering the best-rated broadband coverage, user download experience and latency experience, despite challenges of the pandemic and more stringent benchmarking guidelines.
These initiatives form a large part of PLDT’s capital expenditures, which totaled P460.8 billion in the last ten years. To address the growing data needs of their fixed and wireless customers, PLDT and Smart are prepared to invest between P88 billion and P92 billion in capital expenditures in 2021.
PLDT, the country’s largest, fully integrated telco, has the most extensive fiber optic network in the Philippines at 478,000 kilometers as of end-March 2021. Its relentless drive to provide connectivity for all is aligned with the group’s long-standing commitment to help the Philippines attain the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG #9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.
