Globe Telecom vows to improve services

GLOBE TELECOM executives have met with Mayor Beng Climaco, who is running for congresswoman in District 1, to report the improvement of its mobile phone and Internet services, among other projects, and assured her the company continues to improve connectivity, especially in remote areas.

The executives told the mayor that Globe Telecom is upgrading cell towers to further boost 4G connection which would increase the speed and Internet reliability of their subscribers, but works are expected to start after the election period. 

They said the construction of cell towers in Barangay Limpapa has been approved by the government and once completed, it will boost mobile phone connection in that part of the city, adding fixed line and fiber-optic connection in the east coast barangays shall be made available soon, providing residents faster access to the Internet. 

Globe Telecom is targeting to put up at least 21 cell towers in Zamboanga City before the end of the year. Aside from Globe Telecom, Smart Communications, Inc., a wholly-owned wireless communications and digital services subsidiary of PLDT, is also operating here. 

A PLDT speed check shared by a PLDT Internet service subscriber in Zamboanga City shows only a 9.8 mbps download speed and a 13.7 mbps speed. The subscriber pays about P2,000 month for the plan. (Zamboanga Post)

The meeting occurred after Climaco raised concerns over the slow Internet connection in Zamboanga which has largely affected students and teachers, especially this time of the Covid-19 pandemic where face-to-face classes are limited. 

The mayor, during a recent Youth Voters’ Education forum held at the Western Mindanao State University, said if she wins the election she will pass a legislation that will compel the National Telecommunications Commission and the Department of Information and Communication, including telecom companies to review existing services and provide affordable and accessible data for all, especially students. 

She also questioned the unreasonable data capping being imposed by telecom firms, saying the practice is prejudicial to those who cannot afford the high cost of data plans. “As many institutions shifted to online classes and virtual learning, we need to ensure that no student is left behind (in their online classes due to data capping),” Climaco said. 

Bandwidth cap 

According to industry experts at Tech Target, data cap also known as bandwidth cap, is a service provider-imposed limit on the amount of data transferred by a user account at a specified level of throughout over a given time period, for a specified fee. The term applies to both home Internet service and mobile data plans and results in lower rates of access to online materials, especially multimedia and streaming content. 

Data caps are usually imposed as a maximum allowed amount of data in a month for an agreed-upon charge. As a rule, when the user exceeds that limit, they are charged at a higher rate for further data use. However, the provider may not charge overage but instead throttle the users’ transfer rate per second beyond the limit. For example, a mobile user paying for a 4G plan may be downgraded to 3G for mobile data beyond their data cap. 

Climaco said Globe Telecom has committed to consider introducing a prepaid unlimited data plan for video conferencing apps for students in response to her calls for “no data cap and yes to unli-data.” 

The mayor thanked Globe Telecom for quickly responding to her appeals on behalf of the students and teachers who continue to lament the poor state of Internet service in Zamboanga. “We thank Globe for the many years of fruitful partnership and we look forward to more joint endeavors in the future that will ensure better services for our people, ”  she said. 

Data 

According to data published by Ookla, Internet users in the country could have expected the following internet connection speeds at the start of this year: Median mobile Internet connection speed via cellular networks: 18.68 Mbps and median fixed internet connection speed of 46.44 Mbps.

Ookla is a web service that provides free analysis of Internet access performance metrics, such as connection data rate and latency.

And data from GSMA Intelligence shows that there were 156.5 million cellular mobile connections in the Philippines at the start of 2022. However, note that many people around the world make use of more than one mobile connection – for example, they might have one connection for personal use, and another one for work – so it is not unusual for mobile connection figures to significantly exceed figures for total population.

GSMA Intelligence’s numbers indicate that mobile connections in the country were equivalent to 140% of the total population in January 2022. The number of mobile connections increased by 6.9 million (+4.6 percent) between 2021 and 2022.

Smart Communications has not responded to the concerns of Climaco, who was congresswoman for two terms and as Deputy Speaker for Mindanao before she was elected as mayor in 2013. (Zamboanga Post)