Scores of Globe, Smart in gaming experience decline — Opensignal

MOBILE GAMING experience on the networks of Globe Telecom, Inc. and Smart Communications, Inc., the wireless arm of PLDT, Inc., have both declined during the coronavirus pandemic, Opensignal said in its latest Mobile Network Experience Report.

Globe and Smart scored 34.4 and 34.5 on games experience, respectively, on a scale of 0-100, the United Kingdom-based wireless coverage mapping company said.

In Opensignal’s last report in April, Globe and Smart scored 35.9 and 36.9, respectively.

The declines in both mobile operators’ scores in the November report “cannot be viewed in the context of long-term trends, but given the extraordinary circumstances, they are attributed to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic,” Opensignal said.

The games experience metric, according to Opensignal, “quantifies the experience when playing real-time multiplayer mobile games on mobile devices connected to servers located around the world.”

“The approach is built on several years of research quantifying the relationship between technical network parameters and the gaming experience as reported by real mobile users. These parameters include latency (round trip time), jitter (variability of latency) and packet loss (the proportion of data packets that never reach their destination),” it added.

The games experience metric also considers multiple genres of multiplayer mobile games to measure the average sensitivity to network conditions, Opensignal said further.

Fortnite, Pro Evolution Soccer and Arena of Valor are some of the real-time multiplayer mobile games tested.

In terms of 4G availability, Opensignal said Smart users “saw the proportion of time they spent connected to 4G rise by 3.5 percentage points, taking the operator above the 85% mark and increasing its lead over Globe from the 4.1 percentage points seen in the last report to 5 percentage points, a gain of 1 percentage point.”

Smart also dominated on speed and video experience.

“Smart’s lead in video experience and download speed experience has increased since our previous report—the operator’s scores in these two metrics were 16.6 points (43.9%) and 4.1 Mbps (55.2%) higher than those of Globe,” Opensignal said.

In terms of voice app, Globe users reported better experience than Smart’s.

“Smart’s former lead of 0.8 points has been overturned, with Globe commanding a 0.9 point margin of victory in our current reporting period,” Opensignal said.

Smart users also saw their download speeds increase 8.1% to 11.4 Mbps.

“While Globe’s download speed experience score has fallen, it has done so only very slightly and our Globe users saw a 4.4% increase in their average overall upload speeds,” Opensignal said.

Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has a majority stake in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls. — Arjay L. Balinbin