October 1, 2024 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines remains one of the worst countries for 5G access in Asia Pacific, making it challenging for consumers to load their games and videos in high quality.
In an analysis, Opensignal senior business analyst Benjamin Ives said the Philippines has turned in a 5G download speed of 146.3 Mbps as of June, the fourth lowest among 13 economies in the region.
Moreover, the Philippines recorded a 5G upload speed of 13.2 Mbps, the lowest in the measure, raising the urgency for the country to improve its network capabilities.
South Korea topped the list for both 5G download and upload speeds, putting in 427.5 Mbps and 52.2 Mbps, respectively. Ives attributed South Korea’s dominance in the 5G space to its efforts to build up the network as far back as 2019.
“South Korea is a leader in 5G network development since it was the first country to launch a 5G public network in 2019. This has given it ample opportunity to evolve the technology which has manifested in average 5G download and upload speeds that far exceed those of other countries in the Asia-Pacific region,” Ives said.
Further, Filipinos suffer the worst gaming experience in Asia and the Pacific when hooked to 5G, and they endure the second worst quality for voice and video.
“For countries that have launched the 5G network, the new technology helps improve experience scores for video, gaming and voice applications,” Ives said.
Further, the Philippines placed in the lower half for network availability, with just 11.4 percent of the population covered by a 5G service.
When compared, India is able to reach 52.1 percent of its population, while Singapore and South Korea have covered 35.9 percent and 34 percent, respectively. Ives noted that it is difficult to roll out new infrastructure in archipelagic countries like the Philippines and Indonesia.
In an earlier interview with The STAR, Ericsson head of market area Southeast Asia, Oceania and India Andres Vicente said the Philippines stands to gain from a full on transition to 5G.
Based on Ericsson’s estimates, the economy goes up by 0.8 percent every time a country expands its mobile subscribers by 10 percent, particularly for high-speed, low-latency 5G.
Ericsson believes that 5G subscriptions in the Philippines would grow by five times to 70 million in 2029, from 13 million in 2024, as a result of a broader shift among Filipinos.
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