Defragmenting Spectrum to Accelerate the Philippines’ Digital Transformation

The Philippines stands at a critical juncture, with its highly fragmented mobile spectrum acting as a severe bottleneck to achieving world-class digital connectivity. This paper proposes a regulator-led, accelerated spectrum defragmentation initiative, championed by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), as a critical policy lever to rapidly level up the nation’s ICT sector.

While long-term spectrum planning and network investment are important, defragmentation and improving use of current spectrum resources is fundamentally faster and more capital-efficient. This approach deliverers immediate and substantial gains in network performance—including projected improvements to levels comparable with global leaders in Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas.