PHL mobile internet among world's slowest, most inaccessible –2017 study

While the rest of the developed world is moving forward with fifth-generation (5G) mobile internet, many developing countries are still struggling to adopt older technology—and the Philippines is one of the worst laggards of the lot, according to a recent study.

According to independent mobile industry analyst OpenSignal's "State of LTE" report as of June 2017, out of 75 countries, the Philippines' LTE/4G services ranked 71st in terms of download connection speeds and 72nd in terms of service availability.

The Philippines is shown to have an average download speed of just 8.59 Mbps, and an accessibility rate of just 52.77%—which, according to OpenSignal's methodology, means that people are only able to access the internet only half the time, and on a very slow connection, at that.

In stark contrast, the top fifteen countries in the OpenSignal study are able to provide upwards of 30 Mbps, with a downtime of just 20% at most.

OpenSignal's analysis is based on data gathered from over 500,000 devices around the world between January 1 and March 31 this year.

The Philippine situation seems little changed from last year, when OpenSignal placed the Philippines in 75th place in terms of download speed and 74th in terms of service availability, out of 78 countries surveyed between July 1 and September 30, 2016. — GMA News