The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has made an indelible mark in all aspects of Philippine life. Most notably, it has sharply increased our dependence on digital technologies to meet our everyday needs. Over the course of the lockdown period, and even with the gradual easing of quarantine and social distancing ordinances across the country, Filipinos continue to rely on digital technology services. It is these technologies that have facilitated continued access to education, a boom in e-commerce and banking, and efficient work from home arrangements.
An additional benefit that this acceleration of digitization has given our country is the opportunity to transform what was once paper-based bureaucracy and move into the use of e-governance. This has the potential to increase the speed and responsiveness of public sector services, widen the scope and reach of government communication, and provide a means for increased transparency and accountability in public fund use and services.
In summary, the pandemic’s silver lining is digital and the accelerated digitization across sectors presents an opportunity for progress in the face of crisis. However, this can only be done if the technologies and demand is matched by a reliable and wide-reaching digital infrastructure system.
In the effort to build our nation’s digital infrastructure, the private sector has made a considerable effort. As shared by Mr. Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, Chairman and CEO of the Ayala Corporation, during the Pilipinas Conference of Stratbase ADR Institute held this November, “technology has shifted and has changed, and there are major contributions that have been made to laying out the infrastructure. We’re spending close to one billion dollars a year on a regular basis, year after year, building and rebuilding the infrastructure and adding to it as much as needed.”
This effort by the private sector has not gone unnoticed by the government. In fact, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque recently thanked two private sector telecommunications groups in a press briefing for the developments they had made in expanding digital infrastructure networks.
Such gratitude is much deserved. In the briefing, Mr. Ernest Cu, the President of Globe Telecom Inc., shared that they have spent Php 50 billion this year and have considerable improvements in their 4G/LTE and 5G services. They project that by next year, Globe will spend Php 70 billion to create 25 times more fiber to home and 2,000 additional cell towers. While, Mr. Al Panlilio of Smart Communications, Inc. said they have given free upgrades to over 800,000 customers. In the past five years, Smart has invested a total of Php 260 billion with Php 73 billion invested in the last year alone.
Over the course of our nation’s efforts to combat the negative aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen that the most effective approach in building long-lasting solutions to major issues and large-scale endeavors is to take a cooperative and inter-sectoral approach. We at Democracy Watch Philippines are glad to see that work between the public and private sectors to tackle the challenges of building robust digital infrastructure is becoming more collaborative. We hope that this trend will continue, and trust that government will curb red tape and other bureaucratic barriers to support the development of digital infrastructure through public sector investment.
