DESPITE “improved” mobile data speeds and coverage, the Philippines ranked as the sixth-worst country to use over-the-top (OTT) voice apps in the world and is the second-worst in the Asean and Asian regions, according to a study conducted by research firm OpenSignal.
It ranked “very poor” in terms of overall voice app experience with a score of 62.9 points. This means that most users are dissatisfied with the quality of their Viber, WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger calls due to impairments, distortions, clicking sounds, or outright silence during calls, which require users to repeat their messages to be understood.
The Philippines found itself at the bottom of the 80-country list along with Ghana, Cambodia, Kenya, Libya and Uzbekistan. Topping the list are European countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Slovakia, Finland and Hungary. In Asia, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan emerged as the voice app experience leaders.
This, according to OpenSignal, shows the disparity between “more mature countries, fast-growing ones and developing countries.” The experience in using voice apps over 3G and 4G are not entirely different.
OpenSignal ranked 3G voice app experience as unintelligible, as it scored a lamentable 53.5 points. This means that nearly all users are dissatisfied due to frequent long pauses, frequent repetition for comprehension and conversation overlaps.
In terms of 4G voice app experience, the Philippines scored 67.4 points, which gave it a poor rating. This corresponds to dissatisfaction due to impairments that cause lowered communication perception.
OpenSignal analyzed 57 billion instances from over 23 million users in 80 countries from June to August to come up with this report.
This new report was released a few weeks after OpenSignal claimed that mobile Internet experience in the Philippines improved in August with Smart posting an average download speed 9.4 Mbps, while competitor Globe was at 6.5 Mbps.
Based on the BusinessMirror’s computations, this means that the Philippines has an average download speed of 7.95 Mbps in August, or almost 10 Mbps lower than the global average of 17.6 Mbps, as per the March data of OpenSignal.