Smart, Globe pass NTC quality of service tests

The country’s top telecommunication companies have vowed to continue improving their services to customers following the release of results of the government’s quality of service tests that showed both companies performing at par with each other.

In a statement issued Tuesday, Ayala-led Globe Telecom said results of the National Telecommunications Communications’ (NTC) quality of service tests for the first quarter showed that the company’s network modernization efforts were bearing fruit.

This came despite the company’s scores in some metrics deteriorating from the previous quarter. Explaining the lower scores, the company said its personnel might have been calibrating some parts of its network when the tests were done.

For its part, Globe’s bigger rival Smart Communications said the NTC’s tests proved the company’s “clear superiority” over the Ayala firm.

“It’s 5-0 again in favor of Smart. This encourages us to step up our efforts to ensure customers get the best possible service,” Smart said in a statement.

“We were confident that we will pass all the metrics and we did,” Globe spokesperson Yoly Crisanto said. “Our network modernization is progressively moving forward. In fact, we are practically done with the first phase where all hardware has been replaced with brand new equipment.”

She said the company expected that future tests would continue to show Globe’s improving performance as its network modernization neared completion.

She said Globe was in the process of adding capacity and fine-tuning its network to optimize its performance, adding that the company was “very confident that the network performance will continuously show improvement especially from this point onwards.”

Globe passed all minimum requirements in all five categories tested by the NTC, namely blocked calls, dropped call rates, average signal strength, average signal quality and call set-up times. However, for the percentage of total calls that were blocked, Globe’s score slumped from 2 percent in the fourth quarter to 2.6 percent in the first quarter.

Globe’s score also fell in the area of dropped calls. The NTC results showed 1.53 percent of all Globe calls were prematurely cut, higher than the 1.2 percent the previous quarter.