20 million Filipinos 'internet poor,' says study

At least 20 million Filipinos are “internet poor” or do not have the financial capacity to avail of at least 1 gigabyte (GB) of internet data per month, a study has shown.

According to the World Data Lab on the Internet Poverty Index, the Philippines ranked 16th of 166 countries with the highest number of internet poor residents. The country also ranked 50th among the ranked countries in terms of percentage.

The study likewise showed internet users in the country pay at least P650 per month for internet connectivity — lower than the P1,400 rate in the US.

GMA Integrated News sought the comment of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) but it has yet to respond.

In 2018, the DICT contracted several internet service providers to give free internet connection to 11,000 sites in the country. However, there are now only a few sites left after the contracts expired.

“Before we came in, it went down to 4,000. Tapos 'yung iba kasi, nagco-continue out of the goodness of their heart kasi walang contract eh. Actually, 'yun  'yung mga nililinis namin,” DICT Undersecretary Angelo Nuestro said.

(Before we came in, it went down to 4,000. Others continued out of the goodness of their heart and we’re actually finalizing this.)—Sundy Locus/LDF, GMA Integrated News