By: Wilson Chua
To answer that question, I urge you to read on and decide for yourself using data/analysis below. First let us look at graphs from Projectbass.org, and describe the graph below:
This dual axis chart shows both the average bandwidth on the upper chart, and the number of records used on the lower chart.
The X axis on both the upper and lower graphs shows the date the measures were taken. This covers approximately one-year period from May 2017 to May 2018.
The Y axis shows on the upper graph shows the national average bandwidth. And on the lower graph, it shows the number of records submitted by volunteers. The national average bandwidth was computed using measures of mobile internet access from 6am to 12 midnight.
PLDT/SMART line is colored Green. Globe line is colored Blue. Sun is colored orange.
What do I see?
- The good news is that both Globe and PLDT users can expect a steadily increasing bandwidth experience. The dotted lines show the bandwidth trend. The green dotted line shows a faster rate of increase for SMART mobile internet subscribers. The blue dotted line shows the trend of bandwidth increases for Globe. Only Sun’s trend shows a downward decline over time.
- SMART overtook Globe in bandwidth performance around late August of 2017 and has been widening the gap ever since. This is especially apparent in the current month of May 2018, where SMART’s bandwidth margin over Globe is almost double (20 mbps vs 11.5mbps)!
- The best time to experience 20-30 mbps bandwidth with SMART is during the 1am to 7am time. (in Metro Manila). The X axis of the graph below marks the hours each day, while the Y Axis for the upper graph shows average bandwidth, and the lower graph shows the number of measures recorded during those times.
Some thoughts
Globe’s advantage is that it does have MORE cell sites than SMART (2:1 ratio) as shown in this graph below:
So if you are after bandwidth speed, SMART would be a good choice. But if you are roaming most of the times and you have a preference for better coverage, GLOBE is still the better choice.
These statistics should be a wakeup call to Globe’s upper management. SMART’s 4G network upgrades and footprint expansion are clearly making a substantial difference in performance between the two networks. I hope Globe can match or exceed SMART’s 4G investment as well.
We need volunteers.
Finally, if you would like to be part of Project BASS , please download our iOS or Android app there and start submitting measures in your locality. Make every measure count! We are also looking for iOS and Android developers to add more features to the apps. Big Data analytics gurus are also invited to download the publicly available dataset and see what other insights can be gleaned from it.