Ookla’s Manila Study Favors Carrier Calls as Philippines’ 3G Deadline Nears

Phone calls placed over Philippine mobile networks scored as high as excellent in a new controlled test across Manila, while calls placed through WhatsApp on those same networks never climbed out of fair, even in decent signal. Ookla, the company behind Speedtest, ran the comparison across Smart Communications, Globe Telecom and DITO Telecommunity using its Speedtest Drive testing platform.

The findings arrive about five months before the Philippines shuts down 3G service nationwide for good, at a moment when a majority of Filipino subscribers still carry phones that only know how to connect to it. The quality gap Ookla measured only matters to someone who is still connected to a network capable of carrying it.

Inside Ookla’s 1,200-Kilometer Manila Test

Ookla’s engineers drove roughly 1,200 kilometers around Manila, pulling 23,000 data samples to compare voice over LTE, or VoLTE, the standard that routes calls over 4G instead of old circuit-switched 3G, against over-the-top calling apps like WhatsApp that carry voice as ordinary internet data.

Graders scored every call on the Mean Opinion Score scale, a 1-to-5 rating researchers use to judge how a call actually sounds to a human ear. Operator VoLTE calls landed between good, anything above 4.0, and excellent, above 4.3, on every one of the three networks. WhatsApp calls landed in fair territory, roughly 3.89 and just under 4.0, on the same towers, in the same city, during the same test window.

The gap traces to how each type of call gets treated once it leaves the phone. VoLTE rides on a dedicated, high-priority cellular bearer that carriers reserve specifically for voice. OTT voice gets bundled in with everyone’s video streams, downloads and app traffic, subject to the internet’s best-effort delivery and without the stringent quality-of-connection guarantees a carrier builds into its own voice network.

At the Cell Edge, OTT Calls Start to Crack

The gap widens once signal weakens. Ookla measured performance at reference signal received power, the standard measure of cellular signal strength, at or below negative 100 dBm, the kind of weak reception common at the edge of a cell site or deep inside a building.

Operator VoLTE calls held between 4.0 and 4.5 even there, staying inside HD-grade territory. WhatsApp calls fell hard, from roughly 3.7 down to as low as 2.9, sliding past fair into the poor and bad tiers Ookla defines as below 3.6 and below 3.0. A caller relying on WhatsApp at the edge of coverage is, on this data, rolling dice that a carrier customer on VoLTE simply isn’t.

Codec choice adds another layer. Smart and DITO both run the Enhanced Voice Services codec, a newer standard built for richer audio, and both reached excellent-tier scores. Globe still runs the older Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband codec, which held it to good-tier scores instead, a gap the study attributes squarely to that codec decision rather than network coverage.

Block Rates Expose a Reliability Gap

Sound quality is only half the story. Ookla also tracked block rate, the share of calls that fail to connect at all. Globe posted a VoLTE block rate of 0.47%, against a 1.64% block rate for OTT calls on its own network, a gap of nearly three and a half times.

Ookla ties that gap to the signaling underneath each call type. VoLTE runs on optimized Session Initiation Protocol signaling paired with Single Radio Voice Call Continuity, a handoff mechanism that keeps a call alive as a phone moves between LTE and older radio layers. OTT apps have no equivalent dedicated signaling path; a call setup request competes with every other packet on the network.

Five Months Separate This Study From a Hard Deadline

The timing is not incidental. The National Telecommunications Commission has ordered a nationwide shutdown of 2G and 3G mobile service by the end of this year, under Memorandum Circular No. 002-09-2025, and a controlled voice comparison across Manila’s networks lands squarely inside that countdown.

The circular required operators to file area-specific Technical Transition Plans within 60 days of taking effect, phasing the shutdown from highly urbanized cities down through first, second and third-class municipalities before reaching the rest of the country. It also lets the NTC stop certifying new phones built only for 2G or 3G, pulling those models out of its licensing database and eventually barring their import and sale.

• December 31, 2026 – the National Telecommunications Commission’s deadline for shutting down 2G and 3G mobile networks nationwide.
• Memorandum Circular No. 002-09-2025 – the NTC order that set the shutdown timeline and the device certification restrictions in motion.
• 60 days – the window operators had to submit their Technical Transition Plans once the circular took effect.
• Highly urbanized cities first – the phase-out order, working down to smaller municipalities before the last coverage areas go dark on 3G.

Are Filipino Phones Ready for the 3G Cutoff?

Not on the numbers so far. VoLTE penetration in the Philippines stood at just 30.9% in 2025, among the slowest adoption rates tracked in the region, while roughly 70% of Filipino mobile subscribers still carry handsets that connect only to 3G, according to industry tracking cited by TelecomLead and Tech Pilipinas. That leaves a wide band of subscribers who will need new phones before the network they depend on for calls disappears.

Regulators built in a cushion for that gap. Operators are required to offer device upgrade subsidies, free SIM card swaps, toll-free helplines and walk-in support centers, alongside installment plans prioritizing low-income users, senior citizens and persons with disabilities. Whether that support reaches everyone before their local shutdown phase hits is the open question the Ookla numbers don’t answer.

Budget-tier LTE hardware is already showing up to fill the gap. Locally, TechLife’s recent entry pairs a 12-inch LTE tablet priced under PHP 15,000, about $260, aimed at exactly the price-sensitive buyer this deadline is about to create.

The Newest Carrier Just Out-Codes the Oldest

DITO Telecommunity was brought into the Philippine market as the government-endorsed third player meant to break Smart and Globe’s long duopoly. In this study, it is the one matching the country’s largest carrier stride for stride on audio quality, hitting the same excellent tier as Smart while Globe trails on good.

That result fits a pattern. DITO’s own newsroom has touted three straight Ookla wins for fastest network nationally, a separate ranking from this voice study but one built on the same kind of independent drive testing. Rival network analytics firm Opensignal has published an independent Philippine network experience report of its own, tracking the same three-way competition from a different measurement stack entirely.

That does not guarantee DITO holds the edge everywhere. Globe’s own block rate numbers in this study were the strongest reliability figures cited, even with a codec disadvantage on raw audio score. The three carriers are winning different fights inside the same test.

Voice Quality Becomes AI Calling’s Entry Ticket

Ookla is already building its next argument on top of these numbers. At Mobile World Congress earlier this year, Mark Giles, Ookla’s industry research and analysis director, delivered a keynote titled Experience-Driven Voice Core Network with Ookla RootMetrics, tied to a company push described in its own release as preparing voice quality standards for AI-driven calling.

The logic connects directly to what the Manila test measured. Features like real-time call transcription, live translation or an AI assistant screening a call all depend on a clean audio signal to work from; garbled or dropped packets degrade an AI model’s output the same way they degrade a human ear. A high-performing VoLTE network functions as the prerequisite layer underneath that next generation of calling features, not a competing feature itself.

That framing gives carriers a reason to keep investing in VoLTE infrastructure well past the 3G shutdown deadline, since the payoff Ookla is describing arrives only after the migration is finished, not before.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will WhatsApp Calls Stop Working After the 3G Shutdown?

No. WhatsApp and similar OTT calling apps run over mobile data or WiFi, not over the 2G and 3G voice channels the NTC is decommissioning. A phone that supports 4G or 5G data will keep making OTT calls after the shutdown; the risk is specific to voice minutes carried over the old 3G radio layer itself.

How Do I Know if My Phone Supports VoLTE?

Most phones show a VoLTE or HD Voice toggle inside the network or call settings menu, and an HD icon typically appears onscreen during a call once it is active. Carriers in the Philippines also offer SMS or app-based checks that confirm whether a specific handset and SIM combination is VoLTE-ready.

Which Philippine Carrier Won the Ookla Voice Test?

No single carrier swept every category. Smart and DITO tied for the top audio-quality tier thanks to their EVS codec, Globe posted the strongest measured block rate for reliability despite a lower codec tier, and all three beat OTT calling by a wide margin on every measure Ookla tracked.

Does Making VoLTE Calls Cost More Than Using WhatsApp?

Usually not in the Philippines. VoLTE calls draw from a subscriber’s voice plan, and most current postpaid and prepaid plans already bundle unlimited or high-allowance calling. WhatsApp calls draw from a data allowance instead, which can cost more for subscribers on data-capped plans without a calling bundle.

Can I Use VoLTE and WhatsApp Calling on the Same Phone?

Yes. The two are not mutually exclusive. A VoLTE-capable phone can place standard cellular calls over VoLTE while keeping WhatsApp, Messenger or similar apps installed for international calls, group calls or situations where only WiFi is available.