A key official of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) said on Friday that the country’s two largest telecommunications firms “for the first time both passed” the Quality of Service Benchmarking test for their networks.

According to NTC Director Edgardo Cabarios, Globe Telecom Inc. and Smart Communication Inc. passed the standard for Grade of Service for the month of December 2012, based on benchmarking made by the commission.

In a test that measures network performance based on NTC’s minimum service performance standard for the month of December, Smart and Globe passed the standard Grade of Service, which is at 4 percent. Smart got 1 percent while Globe Telecom had 2 percent.

“We will work hard to do even better,” said Ramon Isberto, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co./Smart Public Affairs head.

Globe said in a text message that they have yet to see the results of the tests.

The tests were conducted using postpaid Globe and Smart’s subscriber identity module (SIM) cards subscribing to regular services and not unlimited services. Sun SIMs, Talk and Text SIMs, Red Mobile SIMs and Touch Mobile SIMs were not used because these SIMs are sharing the networks of either Globe or Smart. The NTC monitoring team made sure that the locations where the tests were conducted and the SIMs were not known to anyone to anyone, except to the members of the monitoring team.

 The monitoring teams conducted tests for one week during December 2012 to determine the quality
of service rendered during the holiday season.

The monitoring team made the calls using the “drive test” method, or while inside a moving vehicle.
 
Results
Block Calls or Grade of Service (GoS) refers to the percentage of calls that were not given access by the network. Based on the test conducted on GoS, Smart was measured at 1 percent, which is the lowest percentage, establishing an edge over Globe, which got 2 percent. Both passed the less than or equal to 4 percent performance standard of the commission, meaning no more than four blocked calls is allowed for every 100 call attempts.

For Dropped Call Rate, or the percentage of ongoing calls that there were involuntarily terminated, both companies passed the minimum 2 percent. Again Smart ranked first with 1 percent dropped calls, followed by Globe at 1.2 percent.

For Average Received Signal Level, Smart had an edge over Globe. Smart measured at -64.49dBm and Globe registered at -71.78dBm. The industry standard for Average Receive Signal Level is more than or equal -85dBm.

For Average Signal Quality (ASQ), Smart got 0.67 and Globe, 0.94. The minimum acceptable range for this item is from zero to four, and the closer to zero, the better. Signal quality zero indicates that there are no errors in transmission.

ASQ is the quality of voice transmission while a subscriber is using a mobile phone. The transmission should not be choppy or garbled.

 Call Set-Up Time refers to the time required for the network to activate the called party. In simple terms, this refers to the period required from the time a subscribers finished dialing to the time of the first ring.

Call set-up time for both telecom service providers were within the acceptable industry standard of below 14 seconds. Smart registered 11.12 seconds while Globe got 11.98 seconds.

The commission will continuously monitor the service performance of the telcos to ensure the quality of their services to the public.