Smart, Globe pass NTC benchmarking test for Q2

MANILA, Philippines - Wireless arm Smart Communications Inc. of dominant carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Ayala-led Globe Telecom Inc. again got passing marks from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) after successfully completing their respective network modernization and transformation.

In a statement, NTC said both Smart and Globe passed the Quality of Service Benchmarking Tests conducted by NTC covering 17 cities in Metro Manila in the second quarter of the year.

The telecom providers passed the benchmarking test conducted for one week each for the months of April, May, and June.

A total of 1,500 calls each were initiated to determine whether network performance measured are within existing NTC and industry standards.

 â€œThe tests were conducted using post paid Globe and Smart SIM cards subscribing to regular services. Sun, Talk and Text, and Touch Mobile SIMs were not used because these SIMs are using the networks of either Globe or Smart,” NTC said.

The purpose of the tests is to measure the network performance of both Smart and Globe and at the same time compare the results to the existing minimum service performance standards prescribed by NTC.

Based on the Quality of Service Benchmarking tests in the second quarter, the grade of service of Smart deteriorated to 1.26 percent in the second quarter fro, 0.87 percent in the first quarter while that of Globe improved to 1.46 percent from 2.6 percent.

Blocked calls or grade of service refers to the percentage of calls that were not given access by the network or percentage of the network failure to establish connection between the caller and the receiver.

 â€œBased on the grade of service, both parties passed the less than or equal to four percent performance standard of the Commission, meaning no more than four blocked calls is allowed for every 100 call attempts,” NTC added.

On the other hand, both companies also passed the dropped call rate wherein the NTC limits the number of calls involuntarily terminated to two for every 100 calls.

Smart’s dropped call rate was steady at 1.07 percent from one percent while that of Globe improved to 1.4 percent from 1.56 percent.

Smart spokesman Ramon Isberto said NTC’s latest network quality tests conducted for the second quarter of the year shows once more the mobile phone network of Smart outperforming competition.

“Just as in the last quarter, Smart had a clear edge in all five parameters of the 2nd Quarter Quality of Service (QoS) Benchmarking tests of the NTC,” Isberto said.

Smart also led in terms of Average Receive Signal Level, registering -65.52 dBm against Globe’s -71.45 dBm. This parameter measures the signal strength provided by the serving cell site to the mobile handset of the subscriber while a conversation is ongoing, and results that are closer to 0 are considered better.

Smart was also ahead in the Average Signal Quality category. Smart scored 0.72 while Globe scored .91, against the minimum acceptable range of from 0 to 4, or the closer to 0, the better. This shows that Smart had better voice quality transmission.

Smart also outdid the competition in terms of Call Set Up Time, or the time it takes for a network to activate the called party. Smart met quality standards with a score of 11.12 seconds, versus Globe’s 12 seconds. The acceptable industry standard is below 14 seconds.