Philippines coverage

What the Philippines numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 34 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 8 Mbps, is the one that matters. It is the speed in the worst tenth of the day, when the cell above the station is full and everybody around you is on it too. A country with a high median and a low floor is a country that works beautifully right up until the moment you actually need it.

If the trip depends on video calls or tethering, plan around the busy figure rather than the typical one.

What happens in Philippines when the network is busy

Congestion is not a fault, it is a Tuesday evening. The question is what your eSIM can do about it, and for most travel eSIMs the answer is nothing: one wholesale agreement per country, one network, and no way out except buying a second eSIM from somebody else while standing in the street.

Here, Orbislo traffic runs over Globe and Smart. When the network you are on degrades we move you to another one, mid trip, without you asking, and tell you afterwards rather than interrupting you at the time.

Mobile operators in Philippines

• Globe Telecom: Globe Telecom reported 65.8 million mobile subscribers for 2025, up 8 percent on the year, of whom 39.2 million were mobile data users.
• Smart Communications: Smart and its TNT brand served more than 59 million mobile subscribers at the end of June 2025, and parent PLDT reported that Smart's combined 5G and 4G network covered around 97 percent of the population.
• Smart Communications, data: Smart had 41.6 million active mobile data users at the end of June 2025, and mobile data traffic on its network grew 5 percent year on year, driven by 5G.
• DITO Telecommunity: DITO began commercial service on 8 March 2021 with 4G and 5G SIM cards in parts of Metro Cebu and Metro Davao. The competition commission welcomed it as a third player in a sector ruled by two companies for years.
• DITO Telecommunity, subscribers: DITO reached 15 million mobile subscribers in July 2025, four years after its commercial launch.

Older networks in Philippines

• The National Telecommunications Commission has set 31 December 2026 as the deadline for decommissioning 3G nationwide, with 2G to follow. Its engineers say emergency numbers and police hotlines remain reachable through the change.
• By late September 2025 DITO and Globe had already switched off 3G, and Smart had committed to do so by the end of that month. The information technology department tied the move to cutting the IMSI catchers used by scammers.
• DITO has no 2G network and has retired 3G, so a phone that cannot use 4G has nothing to connect to on DITO. Globe and Smart agreed to work with the regulator and the information technology department on phasing out 2G.

5G in Philippines

• Smart launched commercial 5G on 30 July 2020 for postpaid customers, starting in business districts including Makati, Bonifacio Global City, Araneta City, Ortigas, SM Megamall, Mall of Asia and Clark Green City in Pampanga.
• Globe added 1,549 new 5G sites in 2025, taking 5G coverage above 98 percent in key cities and to 80 percent in 151 further towns.
• PLDT reported that 5G traffic on Smart's network rose 84 percent year on year in the first half of 2025, while the number of 5G devices on the network jumped 46 percent in a single quarter.

Network notes for Philippines

• In March 2025 PLDT opened a cable landing station in Davao for the APRICOT submarine system, which is routed to avoid the seismically active Luzon Strait and Bashi Channel and adds new Philippine landing points at Baler in the north and Davao in the south.