Filipinos Spending Less on Mobile Phones, But are Texting More

By Rico, 9:09 am Wed Aug 27 2008 - Analysis - What Do You Think?

A press release publicized last August 18 by the Office of Rep. Joseph A. Santiago (Lone District, Catanduanes), chairman of the House Committee on Information & Communications Technology, reveals some interesting facts about mobile phone usage in the Philippines. The data covers the first half of 2008. Too lazy to read the whole statement? Continue to see our summary of the important points.

• “Filipinos spent anywhere from P293 to P148 monthly for mobile telephone services, mainly text messages” (10-30% decrease compared to last year)
• “around 99 percent of all mobile telephone users are prepaid subscribers that buy airtime and text load as needed”
• “The combined traffic figures of Smart and Piltel indicate that their subscribers, on average, send around 23 text messages every day”
• “Smart and Piltel reported an aggregate volume of 121.35 billion text messages” (oh wow, Mr. Santiago must’ve seen the SEC filing we reported on a few days ago!)
• “Smart and Piltel reported a total of 33.2 million subscribers”
• “Globe reported a total of 22.7 million subscribers”

Interesting… no matter how bad the economic situation is, it seems communication remains important for the majority of Filipinos. Imagine what a boon texting must be for our less-fortunate bretheren!

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