The Philippines is known to have a very slow mobile internet connection. However, the speed seems to have shown improvement over the past few months. In fact, the Philippines climbed a few spots in the global ranking of mobile internet speed just this July, according to Ookla.

In Ookla’s Global Speed Test Index, the Philippines rose 3 spots higher from the 75th spot in June to 72nd in July. This is out of 139 countries included in the list. Figures show that average mobile internet download speed improved from 32.84 megabytes per second (Mbps) to 33.69 Mbps.

However, in terms of fixed broadband internet, the Philippines moved down from the 62nd spot in June to the 63rd spot in July out of 180 countries. Despite the downgrade, the country’s fixed broadband speed improved from 66.55 Mbps to 71.17 Mbps in the previous month. Likewise, upload speed rose from 66.86 Mbps to 71.22 Mbps in July. This means some countries have improvement rates better than ours.

In the 50 countries included in Asia alone, the Philippines ranked 17th for fixed broadband and 23rd for mobile internet. While in Southeast Asia, the Philippines ranked 5th out of 10 countries in the region.

Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Gregorio Honasan II said that “These data show us the impressive rate of growth of our country’s internet speeds in just a year.” 

The Secretary further added that the increase in internet speed in the Philippines, as shown by Ookla, gained traction after President Rodrigo Duterte issued a directive last year for telcos to improve their services amid the pandemic, and the strengthened roll-out of DICT’s digital connectivity initiatives, especially the Common Tower Policy.

The Common Tower Policy not only allows sharing of cell towers among telcos but also promotes streamlined processing of permits for building common towers.