Industry leaders gathering talking during an event about technology advancement in the Philippines
Photo file/THEPHILBIZNEWS
By Alithea De Jesus
Even before the pandemic, many foreigners and businessmen see the Philippines as an emerging market for the technology industry, and just recently, our country landed as one of the Top 10 countries in the world when it comes to investments in telecommunications-based on the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Rankings of 2020.
With the demand for connectivity and internet access becoming essential in the new normal, spending to improve telecommunications infrastructure has aggressively increased.
Globe has embarked on wider and more inclusive builds and rollouts of its cell towers and fiber modernization to close the gaps in areas of the country where connectivity needs further improvement. At least P50.3 billion in capital expenditures has been allotted for Globe’s network expansion and upgrades for 2020.
“It’s been a number of years that the country has been over-indexing other countries when it comes to capital expenditures. For 2019, our CAPEX to revenue ratio is about 34%. We expect to continue with the investments because of the increasing demand for our services,” said Ernest Cu, Globe President and CEO.
With the new government policies lifting the restrictive permitting process in place, investments in telecom infrastructure are focused on tower builds to expand coverage and increase capacity. Increasing fiber connections to homes is another investment opportunity to provide customers with better data experience. Countries with better infrastructure have shown better chances and capability to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on their economies.
“With better, faster, accessible and affordable services, more opportunities will be made available to our people. These opportunities will then be translated to a more stable and stronger economy that hopefully will give the Philippines a better spot in World Digital Competitiveness rankings in the future,” Cu added.