Philippines slips a notch in ICT Development Index

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has slipped one notch in a United Nation agency’s ICT Development Index (IDI).

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the UN, ranked the Philippines 101 out of 176 countries in 2017 in its 2017 IDI.

The Philippines’ 2017 ranking is one step lower than last year’s ranking.

The country, however, saw a higher value as it grew 4.67 points on the index, compared to last year’s 4.52 points growth.

The IDI is a powerful tool for monitoring progress towards a global information society as it ranks the performance of 176 economies with regard to ICT infrastructure, use and skills, allowing for comparisons to be made between countries and over time.

“The most important aspect of the IDI is that countries should track their own year on year progress and make policy adjustments to grow their countries’ telecommunication/ICT sector,” the ITU said.

However, the Philippines continues to see an improvement in its information and communication technologies (ICT) despite having a large duoply market,  the ITU said in its Measuring the Information Society Report 2017.

“Despite having a largely duopoly market, the country has achieved a high level of basic mobile access and has deployed the latest wireless and fixed technologies with high download speeds, at least in urban areas,” the ITU said.

The report emphasized that the Philippine mobile services sector is dominated by the duopoly between Smart, under the group Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Globe Telecom, whose main shareholders are the local Ayala Corp. and Singapore Telecom.

It noted that the country is also well endowed with international internet bandwidth driven by its large overseas population and burgeoning business process outsourcing industry.

Moreover, according to the two-volume report, the Philippines’ mobile cellular prices (defined as the average cost of 100 SMS and 30 mobile calls per month) are 3.2 percent of the country’s average monthly GNI (Gross National Income) per capita in 2016, down from 3.42 percent the previous year.