Globe seeks further review of NTC benchmarking results

CEBU, Philippines - Citing the progressive improvement of the company in its network performance, Philippine telecommunications provider Globe Telecom seeks for further review and evaluation from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) after the latter released its latest benchmarking results for the second quarter.

The telecommunications company has raised questions over the regulator, stating that “Globe surpassed all NTC standards which indicate that its modernization program is delivering on its objectives.”

With its continuous drive towards superior network quality and performance, Globe calls for a deeper look into the numbers revealed by the NTC tests.

In the company’s emailed statement, Globe Head of Service Quality Network Technical Group Cris Crisostomo said that its own extensive drive tests that include the NTC drive test routes showed a major difference from the latest NTC test results.

"This may indicate a need to jointly review the latest NTC results in the interest of transparency. We have registered our concerns with the NTC in relation to this matter and now ask for a further review and evaluation on how the results were arrived at by the NTC," he added.

For the second quarter, both Globe and Smart Communications passed the NTC’s benchmark quality tests that were conducted in 17 cities in Metro Manila.

In the commission’s statement, the tests were conducted using postpaid Globe and Smart SIM cards subscribing to regular services.

The network performance of the two biggest telcos are then measured and compared with the existing minimum service performance standards prescribed by NTC.

Smart Communications, on the other hand, cited that the latest NTC results validate the superior mobile service that Smart subscribers experience in terms of reliability, quality and coverage.

It then expressed its commitment towards improving and strengthening its network.

The grade of service of Globe posted an improvement of 1.46 percent from the 2.6 percent in the first quarter while Smart’s grade of service deteriorated to 1.26 percent in the second quarter from 0.87 percent.

For the blocked calls category, Globe and Smart scored 1.46 and 1.26 respectively.

They also passed the dropped call rate parameter in which NTC placed a limit of two calls for every 100 in terms of involuntarily terminated calls.

Smart's dropped call rate was basically steady at 1.07 percent from 1.0 percent while Globe's improved to 1.4 percent from 1.56 percent.

In terms of average received signal level, Smart registered -65.52 dBm while Globe recorded 71.45 dBm which are both better than the standard of -85 dBm.

Meanwhile, Smart and Globe scored 0.72 and 0.91 respectively over the acceptable range of 0 to 4 in the average signal quality category. For call set-up time, Smart registered 11.12 seconds while Globe scored with 11.90 seconds that are both better than the standard of 14 seconds. —/JOB (FREEMAN)