A Phone for Every Filipino

Remember the early 1990s, when the country had less than 2 million telephone lines, and the then monopoly PLDT had to be kicked dragging and screaming into a competitive landscape?

Opening up the telecommunications industry was the best thing that could have happened to PLDT, and to the entire country. Today, thanks to explosive growth in cellular phone use, PLDT, with a market cap of 430 billion pesos, is the most valuable company in the Philippines. Today, businesses that could not operate are now thriving, thanks to communications made so much easier with one out of every two Filipinos owning a phone.

Think what would have happened if the industry was not liberalized. Think how much more expensive would bandwidth be today if competition was not introduced. Think how many other industries in the Philippines are ripe for competition.

We are reaping the benefits of decisions made more than a decade ago. The forecast is for 45 million cellular phone subscribers this year. Considering that half the population are minors, it may well be that we will reach saturation point this year.

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) said Sunday the May elections and the rosy Philippine economic outlook this year will help boost mobile phone subscriber growth.

Edgardo Cabarios, director NTC's Common Carriers Authorization Division said, the regulator projected an additional five million subscribers for a total of 45 million this year. He, however, said that the growth might not be faster than last year, which grew about 15 percent.

Data from Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecom showed that the number of subscribers reached about 40 million last year from 34.78 million in 2005. Smart and Pilipino Telephone Corp has a total of 24.2 million subscribers, while Globe and Touch Mobile subscribers stood at 15.7 million.

Note that the article doesn't even mention Sun Cellular, which has more than a million subscribers. It just shows that the telecommunications industry is a duopoly, but let's leave that to another discussion.

The telecom reforms did not just set the groundwork for the cellular phone industry. The bright star of the Philippine economy, the BPO industry, is dependent on good telecommunications. Here's the take of AT Kearney in its survey of 40 countries for off-shoring.

Nevertheless, the Philippines remains one of the lowest wage locations in the Index and now offers the lowest telecom costs of any country in the Index.