By: Wilson Chua
The Philippines was ranked at 15th place by the ITU this year for the Asia Pacific Region. This ranking was included in the IDI report released at the ITU WTIS 2017 event held in Tunisia.
“The ITU ICT Development Index (IDI) is a unique benchmark of the level of ICT development in countries across the world. The IDI combines eleven indicators on ICT access, use and skills, capturing key aspects of ICT development in one measure that allows for comparisons to be made between countries and over time. IDI 2017 covers 176 economies worldwide.
Comparison with IDI 2016 shows that progress has continued to be made in ICT access and use in almost all countries.
However, it also demonstrates that there are still great disparities in ICT development between more and less connected countries which need to be addressed if inclusive information societies are to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development and other international goals.”
The Philippines’ performance had improved from 4.52 to 4.67 between 2016 and 2017. However, its worldwide rank fell from 100th place to 101th place this year. This was because other countries were more aggressive and thus outperformed the Philippines. The report further states that “The largest South-East Asian archipelago nation has achieved a high level of GSM mobile coverage, with most ICT services provided in a duopoly environment.”
The report further adds “…Both operators launched LTE in 2012 and have deployed since 2013 LTE-Advanced reaching download speeds of 1 Gbps.”
The key indicator table for the Philippines shows that 7 out of 12 indicators were estimates compiled by the ITU.
When reached for comment, Ms. Tess Garcia and Ms. Alana Ramos both of DICT shared that it was hard to collect the data for these statistic.
Ms. Esperanza Magpantay, Senior Statistician (ITU) and Ms. Lourdes Montenegro, Economist, ICT and Data Statisticis Division (ITU) also shared that for situations like theabove, the ITU is the one that computes the estimates. The computation is done based on established and agreed upon methodology.
