Enterprise

Singapore, S. Korea dominate 4G LTE rankings, Philippines struggles

Published

November 10, 2016

Marvin Velasco

Crowdsourced mobile data from OpenSignal revealed some interesting figures for the third quarter of 2016. Based on statistics published today, Singapore and South Korea have the best 4G data speeds and nationwide availability, respectively. Asian neighbors India, Indonesia, and the Philippines didn’t do nearly as well.

4G LTE connectivity is expanding at an exponential rate across the globe, and gradually eclipsing the older 3G technologies from a generation ago. Unfortunately, not every country is experiencing equal opportunities, and some are left wondering where all the bandwidth is going.

Singapore gets top honors for 4G speeds in the world, averaging a blistering 45.86 megabits per second (Mbps). This means you can wirelessly download files at 5.7 megabytes per second (MBps — notice the uppercase B). Remember that a megabyte is equal to eight megabits.

The city-state is followed closely by South Korea at 45.77Mbps, Hungary at 40.61Mbps, and Romania at 35.61Mbps. You have to go all the way down to 25.75Mbps to discover the next-fastest East Asian nation, Taiwan. How about high-tech Japan? Its citizens are enjoying 22.38Mbps.

Even though the majority of the included countries averaged more than 20Mbps, the global average is only 17.4Mbps. We can the blame the terribly low speeds of developing nations for dropping the number.

Indonesia, the Philippines, and India were particularly bad for Asia, averaging only 8.79Mbps, 7.27Mbps, and 6.39Mbps, respectively. It gets even more embarrassing when you combine the three, giving you a total of 22.45Mbps, just above the global norm.

4g-availability-asia-20161110

For nationwide availability, OpenSignal doesn’t measure geographic reach; rather, the metric tracks the “proportion of time users have access to a particular network.” This places indoor connections and moments of high network congestion into consideration, putting all participants on a more level playing field. Garnering a score of 50 percent means users have 4G access half of the time.

South Korea has a near perfect score of 95.71 percent, followed by Japan’s 92.03 percent and Lithuania’s 84.73 percent. The worst-performing countries are Sri Lanka (40.27%), Lebanon (41.53%), Ecuador (42.56%), Ireland (43.45%), and the Philippines (44.8%).

Notice something? Yeah, the Philippines ranks in the bottom five for both 4G speeds and availability. Fingers can be pointed at multiple excuses, such as the difficulty in covering an archipelago and the country’s mobile network duopoly, but the fact remains that the Pacific-based republic struggles to keep up with evolving wireless standards.

Take note, however, that even though this is a global survey comprising 78 countries, numerous African and Asian regions are excluded because they lack test data for fair analysis.

Click the image for a closer look

You can find the complete set of statistics on OpenSignal’s website, complete with interactive maps and graphs. It’s all quite fascinating, and will either enlighten or frustrate you, depending on where you live.

If you want to contribute to the cause, you can download OpenSignal’s app for Android or iOS. On top of collecting data, it can also help you find more stable network connections and nearby Wi-Fi hotspots around the globe.

Confused by some of the terminology? Watch our LTE-A explainer video to bring you up to speed:

Enterprise

ACMobility Launches ChargeFleet: Seamless solution for businesses

B2B solution for corporate fleets and transport groups

Published

February 18, 2026

GadgetMatch

Ayala Group’s ACMobility has launched ChargeFleet, a new B2B digital solution for corporate fleets and transport groups.

The new service introduces a shareable digital wallet that streamlines charging expenses, reduces manual tracking, and improves cost control.

As more organizations explore electrifying their mobility operations, many continue to face operational challenges — including fragmented payment systems, reimbursement delays, and limited visibility over charging usage.

ChargeFleet addresses these gaps by introducing a centralized, shareable digital wallet. Here, fleet managers can allocate and monitor charging credits across multiple drivers across a single platform.

The system is a seamless process designed for long-term usage and easy deployment across any organization.

Once integrated, ACMobility assigns charging credits to the client’s fleet manager. The manager then can distribute these to multiple drivers. Meanwhile, the latter will be able to see and use their assigned credits via the Evro app.

ChargeFleet is available as a prepaid product through the ChargeFleet Store. Users can buy offers via GCash or credit card. No application process is required.

Looking ahead, ACMobility will continue to enhance the ChargeFleet experience with exclusive value-added perks integrated through Evro and Power on Wheels.

The upcoming features highlight ACMobility’s ongoing push to provide a future-proof support system for the evolving needs of their customers’ businesses.

Enterprise

Sony teams up with 13 companies for sustainable global supply chain

Sustainability through introduction of renewable plastics

Published

February 9, 2026

GadgetMatch

Sony, along with several companies, have established the world’s first global supply chain for the production of renewable plastics that can be used in Sony’s high-performance audiovisual products.

The supply chain consists of 14 companies across five countries and regions. The various plastic materials manufacture through this supply are slated for use in Sony’s products that will launch worldwide.

High-performance products such as audiovisual equipment involve a wide variety of plastics. The result is a complex supply chain that makes it difficult to visualize and manage the entire flow.

Additionally, plastic components that require high performance in terms of flame resistance and optical properties cannot be fully replaced with plastics from material recycling.

To address these challenges, these 14 companies have collaborated to visualize the existing supply chain for Sony’s products:

Sony Corporation
Mitsubishi Corporation
ADEKA CORPORATION
CHIMEI Corporation
ENEOS Corporation
Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corporation
Hanwha Impact Corporation
Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd.
Mitsui Chemicals, Inc.
Neste Corporation
Qingdao Haier New Material Development Co.
Ltd., SK Geo Centric Co., Ltd.
Toray Industries, Inc.
Toray Advanced Materials Korea Inc.

Sustainability through renewable plastics

The new supply chain created will enable the production of multiple types of renewable plastics from biomass resources with a mass balance approach.

This allows Sony to proactively source raw materials for its products with quality, as well as properties equivalent to virgin fossil-based plastics.

Defining the supply chain also helps the companies track and document GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions data in a verifiable way.

This allows participating companies to leverage the data to advance efforts to reduce their carbon footprint going forward.

Sony’s initiative with a wide range of global partners is part of the “Creating NEW from reNEWable materials” jointly launched by the electronics giant and Mitsubishi.

It aims to achieve zero usage of virgin fossil-based plastics through the introduction of renewable plastics.

Enterprise

realme is reportedly going back to being an OPPO sub-brand

All scheduled phones will still launch on time, though.

Published

January 9, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

A popular story among Chinese smartphone brands is whenever a sub-brand spinning off into its own independent entity. A less common one is when an independent entity suddenly merges back into the main entity. And yet, that’s the story we have today. realme is reportedly going back to being a sub-brand of OPPO.

If you don’t remember realme’s time as a sub-brand, then it’s hardly your fault. It’s been a long while since realme was considered a sub-brand. In 2018, the brand spun off on its own to form one of the most popular names in the Chinese smartphone space.

Today, via Leiphone, realme will return to OPPO as a sub-brand. Current realme CEO Sky Li will still retain his responsibilities heading the brand. Plus, all products on the current release schedule will still come out as planned.

However, starting this year, realme will start reintegrating back into OPPO, particularly through the latter’s after-sales programs. OnePlus will also follow the same structure going forward.

Currently, realme has not officially announced the move. That said, we also don’t know how the brand will address the reported change. It’s possible that the shift is just internal and has no effect on how the brand faces the public. For now, only time will tell.