The Philippines lags behind in 5G performance in Asia Pacific

October 1, 2024 | 12:00 p.m

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines remains one of the countries with the worst 5G access in the Asia-Pacific region, making it difficult for consumers to load their games and videos in high quality.

In an analysis, Benjamin Ives, senior business analyst at Opensignal, said the Philippines achieved 5G download speeds of 146.3 Mbps in June, the fourth lowest among 13 economies in the region.

Additionally, the Philippines recorded a 5G upload speed of 13.2 Mbps, the lowest in the measurement, increasing the urgency for the country to improve its network capabilities.

South Korea leads the pack in both 5G download and upload speeds with 427.5 Mbps and 52.2 Mbps respectively. Ives attributed South Korea’s dominance in the 5G space to its efforts to build the network back in 2019.

“South Korea is a leader in 5G network development, having become the first country to launch a public 5G network in 2019. This has given it ample opportunity to further develop the technology, which has been reflected in average 5G download and upload speeds well above those of South Korea and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region,” Ives said.

Additionally, Filipinos suffer the worst gaming experience in Asia and the Pacific when connected to 5G and suffer the second worst voice and video quality.

“For countries that have adopted the 5G network, the new technology will help improve experiences for video, gaming and voice applications,” said Ives.

Additionally, the Philippines ranks in the bottom half when it comes to network availability, with only 11.4 percent of the population covered by 5G service.

In comparison, India can reach 52.1 percent of its population, while Singapore and South Korea reach 35.9 percent and 34 percent, respectively. Ives noted that it is difficult to introduce new infrastructure in archipelago countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia.

In an earlier interview with The STAR, Andres Vicente, head of Southeast Asia, Oceania and India market region at Ericsson, said the Philippines would benefit from a full transition to 5G.

According to Ericsson estimates, every time a country increases its mobile subscriber base by 10 percent, the economy grows by 0.8 percent, particularly for high-speed, low-latency 5G.

Ericsson expects the number of 5G subscriptions in the Philippines to increase fivefold from 13 million in 2024 to 70 million in 2029, reflecting a broader shift among Filipinos.