Philippines led region in satellite phone use before Globe's launch, Ookla finds
Ookla data shows Starlink satellite registrations building in the Philippines months ahead of Globe's commercial launch.
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| File photo: Ookla logo and Globe x Starlink partnership poster |
Satellite use surged before launch
The Philippines had the largest detected base of satellite direct-to-device (D2D) users in Asia Pacific a full quarter before its commercial service even launched, according to a new Ookla report tracking satellite-to-mobile adoption across Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
Globe received a permit from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) on June 29, 2026, and launched the service, Southeast Asia's first commercial D2D offering, the next day. Ookla's background signal scans, however, showed devices already registering on Starlink's D2D network in the Philippines starting January 2026.
The report attributed this early activity to network testing, opportunistic device registrations, and coverage validation runs by the operator.
The detected user base built steadily from January, reached nearly four times its January level by May, then fell back in June, a pattern Ookla said fits a test campaign winding down ahead of launch.
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| Data from Ookla |
The Philippines also drove most of the region's growth in detected D2D users. Unique devices detected each month across the four markets grew more than fivefold between July 2025 and May 2026, with the Philippines behind most of that increase. Australia held 79.9 percent of the region's detected users in the fourth quarter of 2025; by the second quarter of 2026, the Philippines held 64.0 percent against Australia's 28.5 percent.
Ookla attributed this largely to population scale, noting the Philippines has more than four times Australia's population and tens of millions of compatible LTE Android devices already in the market. Adjusted for population, though, detected users in the Philippines from January to June 2026 were less than half of Australia's, and each user appeared on the network just over a third as often.
Disaster response is a central driver of the Philippine case, the report said. Globe's first operational deployment came before its commercial launch, when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Mindanao on June 8, 2026. The operator opened free satellite-to-mobile access to more than 700,000 affected subscribers in South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, and Sarangani, and more than 150,000 connected, according to Globe.
The share of the country's detected D2D devices in those three provinces nearly doubled, from 11.6 percent in May to 21.1 percent in June.
Ookla noted that Globe's own user count spans its full subscriber base, most of which sits outside Ookla's Android sample, explaining why national detections could dip in June even as the earthquake pulled activity toward Mindanao.
The report framed disaster exposure as the core use case for D2D in the Philippines, citing PAGASA's count of roughly 20 tropical cyclones entering the country's area of responsibility each year. It also notes that Smart's own trial with Lynk Global, tested in Catanduanes in January 2026, was framed around similar needs, and that the NTC cited a digital-divide mandate in granting Globe's permit.
Signal quality in the Philippines, however, lags behind the region. Only 15.5 percent of Philippine signal scans reached −118 dBm or better, a level Ookla called fair for a satellite link, versus 27.4 percent in Australia, 27.6 percent in Japan, and 30.0 percent in New Zealand.
Ookla attributed the gap mainly to Starlink's satellite orbits, tilted 43 and 53 degrees from the equator, which concentrate coverage at mid-latitudes and thin it toward the tropics, where Manila sits at 14 degrees north.
Second-generation Starlink satellites, targeted for 2027 with roughly 20 times the current throughput, should narrow that gap, Ookla said. Globe has priced its service from PHP 99, or about USD 1.65, per month, which the report describes as suited to the affordable mass access that the country's disaster exposure calls for.
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Source: Ookla
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