MANILA - Globe Telecom president and CEO Ernest CU said Friday internet speed is not the only "determinant" when it comes to customer experience.
This, after the president and CEO of rival PLDT Inc Manny Pangilinan said in a briefing that the country would have been ranking higher in internet speed tests if PLDT and its unit Smart were the only providers in the country.
"In terms of speed, coverage, video experience, customer experience, in general, we dominate that space. Kaya if PLDT were the sole telco and Smart were the sole telco in the country today, our rankings would be 15 places higher, would be much better," Pangilinan had said Thursday.
When asked to comment about the statement, Cu said: "I would be very careful about making statements like that given that we're in a similar position as a legacy telco."
"I would like to dissuade the press and the public with their fixation on speed. Speed is not only the determinant of customer experience. After a certain speed, just like the top speed in cars, it becomes irrelevant," Cu said.
"What's more relevant is you can get to where you're going in a vehicle. You can browse and you can use experience the internet capably on the network," he added.
Cu said they're also competing with other providers such as Converge ICT, which is focused on fiber broadband.
"It will be very difficult to say that they would pull the speeds down when on average, the speed on an all-fiber network will be faster than a hybrid network which PLDT and Globe have," Cu said.
The Philippines ranked 86th, down 3 spots, in the mobile internet speed ranking, with an average download speed of 25.43 Mbps, and 81st in the fixed broadband category with an average download speed of 46.25 Mbps, according to Ookla's Speedtest Global Index in March 2021.
Meanwhile, with good first quarter numbers, Cu said Globe is in "very good shape" to serve its consumers despite the pandemic and the recent surge in cases that would likely impact growth of smaller firms.
President Rodrigo Duterte earlier urged the telcos to improve services. In turn, the administration has also been approving measures to reduce red tape and to hasten cell tower builds.
The Bayanihan to Recover As One Act, the country's second coronavirus response law, has a provision streamlining the permitting process for cell tower constructions, which could "dramatically" increase towers in the country, a Globe official earlier said.
Globe said it has built a total of 318 new cell towers as of the end of March, up 152 percent in the same comparable period.
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