Mediaboss Marketing

by Cathy Rose A. Garcia, ABS-CBNnews.com

MANILA, Philippines A word war between arch-rivals Globe Telecom and Smart Communications erupted on Thursday after the release of the results of the National Telecommunications Commission's network quality test.

The NTC gave Smart an edge over Globe in a 4 out of 5 benchmarks in a test comparing the quality of the telcos' networks in the second quarter.

In a press briefing, Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu said their network had a significantly better score when it comes to grade of service at 4.45% compared with Smarts 9.95% based on the NTC results. But both still fell short of the NTC standard of 4%.

Cu pointed out that Globes call success rate is higher, even though it is still using the legacy network, compared to Smart which has a lower score using its newly modernized network.

The NTC results, Cu said, showed Globes network is mostly "at parity" with Smart and has no discernible difference when it comes to drop call rate, signal level, signal quality and call setup time.

For instance, the NTC said Globes drop call rate is 1.66%, while Smarts is 1.53% - both well within the NTC standard of 2%. But Globe noted the 0.13% difference is so small that it means the two telcos are likely to experience the same amount of drop calls.

As for call setup time, which measures how fast domestic calls are connected, Smart had 11.74 seconds, compared to Globes 11.9 seconds, well within the NTC standard of 14 seconds.

Cu criticized Smart for its negative ad campaign against Globes network, saying the NTC results show there is no basis for saying their network is superior.

Its at parity. When you say, we have a higher drop call rate, when is a subscriber able to discern 1 drop call in 100? In this case, they are better in call setup, but a 0.16 difference does that matter? Does it matter to criticize someone over? Will these small, minute differences say your network is better? Cu said.

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Globe-Smart word war erupts over NTC network test results