Smart, Globe get passing grades from NTC

MANILA, Philippines - Smart Communications Inc., the wireless arm of dominant carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), and Ayala-controlled Globe Telecom Inc. again got passing marks from the state-run National Telecommunications Commission(NTC).

NTC deputy commissioner Edgardo Cabarios said Smart and Globe passed the Quality of Service Benchmarking Tests conducted by NTC covering 17 cities in Metro Manila in the first quarter of the year.

Cabarios pointed out that both telecom providers passed the benchmarking test conducted for one week each for the months of January, February, and March.

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

“The 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,” he added.

He explained that 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 last month, the NTC chief revealed the grade of service of Smart improved to 0.87 percent in the first quarter from one percent in December while that of Globe deteriorated to 2.6 percent from two 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.

“Based 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,” Cabarios stressed.