Policy Statement
Philippines

Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
 
It is with great pleasure that I share with you how the Philippines has benefited greatly from the increased deployment, adoption and use of ICT. 
 
The advances in ICT is very evident in the telecom sector. As you know, the Philippines has adopted a pro-competition policy. Existing operators have invested heavily in the sector and deployed or expanded their network and are planning to do so for broadband services using several broadband technologies. They already offer a variety of innovative broadband services, including pre-pay options and bundled services with PCs and laptops for first-time users.
 
In terms of national broadband infrastructure, the Philippines is one of the few countries in the world that has a competitive fibre-backbone infrastructure. Around 80% of the country’s 80 provinces have fibre-based infrastructure of at least one operator and around 50% of the provinces have at least two operators. On the last mile, these operators are also aggressively building out their fixed wireless broadband solutions.
 
The presence of broadband infrastructure, coupled with the country’s abundant and globally competitive workforce, were instrumental in the development of the  Next Wave Cities, or cities ready to host the Information Technology- Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry. It is estimated that about 20% of the industry is now located outside the main metropolitan areas of Manila and Cebu and we expect this to continue to increase.
 
The expansion of Next Generation Networks (NGN) and broadband telecommunications infrastructure will encourage  ICT usage, will improve ICT pervasiveness and will promote active participation of Filipino citizens as a member of the international community. We are glad to participate in the ITU Study on NGN Planning and Migration Strategies Case Studies to show what the Philippines is doing in terms of NGN.  
 
The mobile telecommunications sub-sector continues to grow as telecom operators have been deploying more cellsites and migrating their networks to 3G and 3G plus in order to offer high speed mobile Internet. We have seen the availability of more mobile handsets , even a local brand that bundled the mobile terminal with local digital content, including social studies-related content and music. We have also seen the increasing preference in using the mobile phone as a payment mechanism for e-commerce.
 
We believe that with public private sector partnership, the Philippines will continue to improve on its state of ICT.
 
In line with the ITU’s Connect a School Connect a Community Program, We, the Philippine Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) has been implementing the Community eCenter (CeC) Program to increase citizen access to ICT in rural areas. A community e-center is a self sustaining shared facility providing affordable access to ICT-enabled services and relevant content. We have also established the Philippine Community eCenter Network (PhilCeCNet), our multi-sectoral partner in the implementation of the Philippine CeC Program. PhilCeCNet now boasts of over 400 organizational members. It also established, in partnership with the global telecenter organization, called telecentre.org, a Philippine CeC Academy as its capability building arm. I am very pleased to share with you that the Philippines has been selected to chair and host the global telecentre.org program. We are also delighted to participate in a project jointly undertaken by the ITU and the Asian Development Bank to document rural ICT development case studies.
 
In addition, we the Commission on ICT, in collaboration with our Department of Education, universities and colleges as well as non-government and private sector organizations, continues to establish computer labs with Internet access in each of the Philippines’ 6,000 public high schools, spread across our 7,100 islands. We have also established different digital opportunity centers to continuously cater to the different marginalized sector, such as persons with disability and out-of-school youth, teaching them the basic ICT literacy using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). We even have a call center for the blind program! We thank the ITU for its assistance in the development and delivery of ICT training tools to promote livelihood of rural women, which was piloted in a province frequently visited by tropical storms or typhoons.
 
The Philippine government in consultation with stakeholders in both the public and private sectors is currently in the process of formulating a successor roadmap or the Philippine Digital Strategy for the years 2011 – 2016 to further harmonize our efforts in setting future directions and implementing projects in the years to come. We are pleased to partner with ITU in a project that will develop and maintain ICT indicators to measure ICT development in the Philippines. These indicators guide us in setting our targets and objectives as well as the means to monitor the implementation and effectiveness of our strategies and programs.  
 
We will pursue the adoption and use of ICT as one of the strategic solutions to improve governance and alleviate poverty, as our President Benigno S. Aquino III  has pointed out as one of his priorities. We shall continue programs and projects that will provide access to easy, low-cost or even free, and reliable ICT in order to reach the goal of having ICT for All.
 
We believe that the installation and operation of inter-operable eGovernment systems, which run across multi-agencies and different sectors is key for transparency and credibility as they would streamline workflows and enhance accountability, aside from bringing about higher productivity.  We shall take advantage of new ICT technologies that will ensure a holistic solution to our socio-economic problems to attain peace and prosperity. 
 
With our modest advances in ICT, the Philippines would like to share our thoughts and ideas and continue to serve the ITU as a member of the Council. We do hope you can vote for the Philippines again. We look forward to continue working with all of you with renewed passion and vigor in effecting changes that would bring out the best in the ITU.
 
Thank you very much and as we say in our national language, Mabuhay!