“Video Experience” in the Philippines has improved along with the increasing popularity of video streaming among Filipinos, according to the latest analysis by telecom analytics firm OpenSignal.
Video Experience measures the average video experience of Opensignal users on 3G and 4G networks. It involves measuring real-world video streams, and takes picture quality, video loading time, and stall rate into account.
The analysis, which is available on Opensignal’s website, found that compared to the third quarter of 2018, the Video Experience of users in the Philippines increased by 29.5%, from 35.8 points to 46.4 points in the first quarter of 2020, right before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, Latency Experience in the Philippines also improved from 75.4ms in the third quarter of 2018 to 60.6ms in May 2020 during the pandemic. Latency experience represents the typical delay a user experiences when connecting across an operator’s networks in milliseconds (ms), hence the lower the score, the better.
At the operator level, the Video Experience score of Globe Telecom rose from 29.2 points to 40.9, an increase of 11.7 points (40.1%) between Q3 2018 and Q1 2020.
PLDT-owned Smart Communications also increased from 42.4 points to 53.5 points, a rise of 11.1 points (26.3%) over the same timeframe.
Globe users saw their average latency improve by 15.8 ms (20.6%) between Q3 2018 and the last quarter that included pre-Covid-19 data. Those users on Smart’s network saw a more modest improvement over the same period of 12.7 ms (17.2%).
“However, during the periods that were fully influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic, Smart’s Latency Experience score continued to improve while Globe’s started to rise. As a consequence our Smart users observed a larger improvement (in both absolute and percentage terms) than their Globe counterparts — a drop of 16 ms (21.7%) versus 13.4 ms (17.5%) between Q3 2018 and the 90 days commencing May. 1, 2020,” the report said.
According to Opensignal, average user experience while streaming video has been “Fair” (40-55) since the third quarter of 2019 — up from the “Poor” rating observed in the previous four quarters, adding that Video Experience has remained ‘fair’ despite the impact of the pandemic.
“This indicates that operators’ efforts to ensure their networks would still support video streaming services despite the changes in usage patterns brought were successful,” Opensignal said.
