The Connectivity Plan Task Force (CPTF) spearheaded by Philippine telco Globe Telecom has reportedly asked the government to subsidise up to 50GB of data per month to families in rural areas to boost usage of base stations in those areas.
Globe Telecom president and CEO Ernest Cu, representing the CPTF, made the proposal to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr while discussing plans to construct new mobile towers in so-called geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDAs) where internet connectivity has not yet reached, according to the Philippine Star.
Cu told Marcos Jr that a key challenge of deploying towers in rural areas is that they’re generally not profitable unless they’re used enough by customers – which means that it’s necessary to maximise use of existing towers before setting up new ones, the report said.
The trick is that families in GIDAs can’t afford data packages that enable that level of internet usage. Consequently, the CPTF wants the government to subsidize data plans for those families until 2028.
Under the proposal, families living in GIDAs would be provided with SIMs that have an automatic allocation of 50GB per month for a year. The CPTF said that amount would be enough data to serve a household with five members, the report said.
At the meeting with Marcos, the CPTF also asked the government to ease opex costs for telcos by reducing or scrapping spectrum user fees (SUF), which has cost telcos an average of PHP5.39 billion (US$96 million) annually between 2018 and 2022, the report added.
The recently formed CPTF operates under the Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC), which Marcos Jr established in 2022 to foster public-private sector collaboration. That includes finding ways both sectors can collaborate to build out internet infrastructure in over 7,000 GIDAs in the country to help meet the government’s own digitalization goals.
Much of the discussions so far have focused on getting the government to invest more in internet infrastructure to take the financial pressure off telcos’ capex budgets. In April 2024, the PSAC recommended that the government set aside at least PHP240 billion to help build out 35,000 new tower sites for GIDAs.
The PSAC also recommended that the government allocate at least PHP60 billion for the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to lease towers, build last-mile facilities, and optimize existing telco infrastructure, saying this was needed to provide internet access to 125,000 public facilities, including schools, hospitals, and health centres, over the next four years.
