In one decade, even less, since 2001, the Philippines made a quantum leap in tele- communication.

In 2000, when not living in a big city, you had to go to next landline phone (PLDT) to call somebody. This next phone often was miles away from your home. To make a call abroad, you had to ask for a PLDT operator and had to wait up to many hours until your connection had been established. The communication quality was often very poor.

The (re)volution started under the presidency of Fidel Ramos in 1992, when Fidel Ramos set as a goal a 10 fold increase in phone lines in ten years. The mobile tele- communications (cellphone) projects were introduced by president Joseph Estrada.
As a fate of the history, president Joseph Estrada, (aka. Erap), was ousted by the EDSA Revolution of 2001 (EDSA II), when hunderd thousands of Filipinos alerted by short text messages (SMS), protested at the EDSA Shrine.

Today the Philippines mobile telecom networks are available all over the county. While in most places only GPRS or GSM technology is available, in the big urban regions of Manila, Cebu and Davao, also G3 (UTMS) networks are available.

Pinoys and Pinays only rarely use the cellphone to call each other. They use SMS or as they call it "texts" to chat during hours. You may see them anywhere at any time keying in their short messages in their cellphones.

When you are for vacation in the Philippines, you may want to stay in contact with your family, friends and business partners.

Your cellphone should work here at least with GSM and GPRS networks. In some places you even may connect to UMTS (G3) and now LTE (G4) networks. For a map of GSM/GPRS/G3 coverage click here. But your bill back home will be very high, or your preloaded amount will melt like snow in the sun. It is therefore recommendet to buy a local prepaid SIM card and one or more prepaid "loads".

SIM cards are extremely cheap. For the basic model (with memory for about 80 SMS or texts) and 50 or so phonebook entries, you pay PHP 40.00. There are also SIM cards with more memory available. These are slightly more expensive.

Prepaid "loads" are available for as low as PHP 10. But for holiday needs, we recommend to buy one ore two PHP 300 "loads". So, you are sure you always have enough "load" and your "load" won't expire before you fly home.

SIM cards are available virtually anywhere. We recommend not to buy them at a machine at the airport. There, the SIM cards are awfully expensive. You may buy them at any cellphone repair shop, or nearly any sari-sari store. Best is to buy them in one of the stores of the two big telecom operators, SMART or GLOBE.

"Loads" you can buy also anywhere. Look for the logos of SMART or GLOBE. You find them even in the most remote places. Often you can only get an "e-load". This is a load transmitted from one cellphone (the vendor's cellphone) to another phone (your cellphone). It works fine. But we prefer to have a spare "load-card" with us.

You may not want to swap your SIM cards (the one from home and the one from here) all the time. Why not buy a cheap cellphone in the Philippines. The little plastic Nokias are sold for a bit more than PHP 1000.00

If you want to connect to the Internet, please read below.

Most of the Filipinos use cellphones with prepaid SIM cards. When the "load" is at zero, they simply buy another "load", or better, ask a friend to send them a little bit of "load".

Prepaid "load" cards are available anywhere. Even the grocer and the butcher sell them. When you buy such a card, first have a look on the back side. There you find the expiry date of the card. In remote places, you often get expired cards or cards to expire soon. Do not buy them.


Then you should also know that your "load" expires. Since July 19, 2009, the life of credits:

P10 to P50 is 15 days.
P50 to P100 is 30 days
P100 to P250 is 60 days
P250 to P300 is 75 days

This life of credits starts at the moment you transmit the code on the back of the "load" card.
The transmition procedure of the code to the operators are slightly different. So please read carefully the printed user's guide on the back of the card.

You never will find a dictionnary for the vocabulary used by the Pinoys when "texting". They not only write in Tagalog or Taglish, but also, they use abreviations. Here is a real sample with translation:

"Sir,gud am! Ds s frm techn0smart. I wud jst lyf 2 ask f u hav rcvd an adapter frm us 2gdr wid d vide0card?!"

"Good afternoon sir! This is from Technosmart. I would just like (love?) to ask if you have received an adapter from us together with the videocard?!"

Internet is omni-present in the Philippines. As a visitor you may want to read your e-mail or keep your family and friends and maybe your boss informed about your adventures.

You have 3 possibilities to communicate over the Internet:

1. The Internet café

They can be found anwhere in the Philippines. During school hours they are mostly empty, but when school is out, they are overcrowded. Until late in the night the gamers and chatters and facebookers occupy all available machines. Forget your privacy! A foreigner in an Internet café attracts the other users like light attrcts mosquitos.

Internet cafés in the Philippines are cheap. Usually you pay 20 to 30 pesos per hour. In large cities and in tourist spots the rates may go up to 60 - 100 pesos per hour. This is still affordable

2. Your smartphone

If you own a smartphone you may use it as your Internet communication device. Get a prepaid SIM card from GLOBE or SMART and have your smartphone configured in a shop of these companies. Connections to the Internet from your cellphone cost about the same as from an Internet café: PHP 20 for 30 minutes.

3. Your laptop or netbook

[Updateds: 2012-04-10]
If you have your laptop or netbook with you, then there are no limits to get on the Interenet. If you have a cellphone with inbuilt modem and either a USB link or Bluetooth, then you only need a prepaid SIM card from GLOBE or SMART and have your smartphone and computer configured in a shop of these companies.

If your cellphone does not have such a device, you can buy a USB-stick from either GLOBE or SMART and plug it into your laptop or netbook. The G3 SMARTbro stick costs now PHP 995 (before PHP1995) with PHP 100 loaded on the SIM card. SMART writes that their connection speed is "Up to 2 Mbps where 3G coverage is available". SMART bills 10 pesos every 30 minutes. GLOBE's Tattoo costs now PHP 895 (before PHP1895) with free Internet time. GLOBE promises: "Users can experience speeds of up to 2 Mbps". GLOBE costs 5 pesos every 15 minutes. Which marketing team is cleverer? Both services cost 20 pesos per hour, but GLOBE's bills are smarter!

And there is now a new hype! In selected areas in Metro Manila you can have access to the G4 - LTE networks of both operators. This new techology allows peak download rates up to 299.6 Mbit/s and upload rates up to 75.4 Mbit/s depending on the user equipment. But this technology is still limited to some few spots in Metro Manila.

Elsewhere in the country You may find HSDPA+ cells that allow SMART 12  Mbit/s and GLOBE 7.2 Mbit/s. The new USB sticks are are PHP 2,345 for the SMART  "Rocket Plug-It" and PHP 3,495 for the GLOBE "Superstick".

Between 2005 and 2008 GSM and G3 did evolve greatly in the Philippines. Today most of the inhabited aera is covered by GSM.
G3 is only available in and around bigger cities and in tourist spots, such as Boracay, Alona Beach on Panglao, Agoho in Camiguin, Naga or Subic Bay.

The coverage by SMART and GLOBE is about the same. But in a particular place you may encounter a better signal by the one or the other company.

A large map showing the GSM and G3 coverage by summer 2009 is available. Please click here. Caution: This is a very large file of 1.3 MB. It may take some time to download.

PLDT launched the country’s first analog mobile service, Piltel, in 1991, and in 1999 acquired Smart, a GSM network that was launched in 1994. Smart has an estimated 19 million subscribers at the end of 2004. It addition to the main Smart brand, it also competes in the low-end consumer segment through its subsidiary Piltel, aka the Pilipino Telephone Corp. Piltel’s "Talk 'N Text" service accounted for about 20 percent of its subscriber base, or slightly over 4 million users.

Smart introduced an international cash remittance through text service, Smart Padala, in August 2004. Smart Padala now has over 10,000 retailers nationwide. It also launched a pre-paid service in Hong Kong, targeting the large Filipino community there. The company acquired 40 percent of Meridian Telekoms, Inc. (MTI) in 2004 which is primarily engaged in providing wireless broadband and data services to small and medium scale businesses. Aside from MTI and Piltel, Smart subsidiaries also include Smart Money Holdings Corp. (SMHC), content provider Walfac Mobile, Inc. and call center I-Contacts Corp. (ICON).

The network holding company led by the Ayala family, has benefited from its strategic relationship with Singapore Telecom. SingTel has steadily increased its stake in Globe, most recently by acquiring Deutsche Telekom’s 24 percent holding in 2003, and boosting its interest to 40 percent in 2004 with a new infusion of $120 million. It plans to raise its position once again in 2005, to an anticipated 45 percent or higher.

Globe first launched a GSM mobile service in 1994 and later acquired Islacom. Mobile services now account for an estimated 90 percent of Globe’s telecoms revenues. It also offers fixed line services through Innove and ISP services through GlobeNet. Globe operates two mobile brands: Globe and Touch Mobile. Taken together the company ended 2004 with a total of 13 million subscribers, of which 92 percent were pre-paid. The majority, or about 11 million subscribers, were Globe customers. Touch Mobile, which competes in the same mass market as PLDT’s Piltel unit, had 1.698 million subscribers, up slightly from 1.5 million at end-2003

Digitel, which trades under the Sun Cellular brand name, is owned by the Gokongwei family. Launched on March 29, 2003 it is the newest player in the market with about 1.2 million subscribers and approximately 4 percent market share. It reached an impressive 1 million subscribers after its first three quarters in operation. Sun has introduced aggressive promotions, including plans for unlimited on-net calling and over-the-air credit loading service like Smart and Globe. The company plans to spend $200 million in 2005 to increase network capacity from 2 million to 6 million lines.