Digital Nations Index: Growth in innovation highest in PHL
Business Mirror
November 5, 2026
THE Philippines recorded the strongest growth in innovation over the past year in the GSMA’s 2026 Digital Nations Index, helping it tie with Thailand for third place among Southeast Asian economies, officials of the global mobile industry body said.
The index, prepared by GSMA Intelligence, covers 22 Asia Pacific economies. It scores each country on five components: infrastructure, innovation, data governance, security and people.
Innovation remains the weakest area across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). Even so, the Philippines was the “most improved” in that component over the last year, according to Julian Gorman, head of Asia Pacific at the GSMA.
“Innovation is actually the key to turning mobile technology into something meaningful for users, to solving real national problems, to transforming industry,” Gorman said in a media briefing on Wednesday.
Among Southeast Asian countries, only Singapore and Malaysia scored higher in 2026. The Philippines’s infrastructure and innovation scores both rose from 2025. It also stayed in the index’s top band for data governance, alongside the region’s most advanced digital economies.
Jeanette Whyte, head of policy and external affairs at GSMA Asia Pacific, credited the country’s early move on data privacy. She noted that the Philippine privacy regulator has been cited across the Asia Pacific as an example of how to teach the public what data privacy means.
“Here, you’re continuously investing in it,” Whyte said.
She also cited Globe Telecom’s work on the GSMA’s scam-signal data exchange as proof of the country’s progress.
“The Philippines has been the first one of all the countries in Asean that we’re working in to actually get some data exchange,” she said.
She described the result as “sheer determination” rather than a technology breakthrough.
Most anxious, most willing to bear friction
A separate GSMA report, the Asean Consumer Scam Report 2026 prepared with research firm Armidale, found that Filipinos remain more exposed to scams than most of their neighbors.
Ten percent of Filipino consumers said they were scammed in the last 12 months, against a regional average of 8 percent. Only Vietnam, at 13 percent, posted a higher rate.
Filipinos are also the region’s most anxious consumers. Seventy-six percent said they “absolutely” worry about scams, and 78 percent said they have changed their behavior because of them.
The survey found Filipinos the most willing to accept extra security steps in exchange for protection. They rated the inconvenience they currently experience in online transactions at 6.5 out of 10, and said they would accept up to 7.2.
Both figures are the highest among the six markets surveyed.
“The Philippines highlights as the one who’s the most willing to be inconvenienced if it means being safer,” Gorman said.
Victims in the Philippines are also more likely to take their complaints to digital platforms than to the authorities. Forty-nine percent of Filipino victims reported to a platform, the highest in the region, while only 16 percent went to the police, against a regional 36 percent.
Investment and crypto scams reached 41 percent of Filipino victims, well above the regional 29 percent. Twenty-four percent of Filipinos have switched providers, and 62 percent avoid contact or transactions because of scam concerns.
Whyte attributed the country’s high scam awareness partly to culture.
“If you’ve seen someone that’s had a scam, you talk about it,” she said. “That’s why the awareness in the Philippines is very high.”
Gorman cautioned against reading the open public debate as proof that the problem is worse in the Philippines.
“Superficially, people might say, ‘Okay, actually the problem in the Philippines is worse than everywhere else.’ I think that is not proven by the level of debate,” he said.
Across the region, the report found that 82 percent of victims who lost money recovered none of it. It also found that 45 percent of reported cases are never resolved.
40 million still underserved
Despite the country’s progress, Gorman said GSMA data show that 40 million Filipinos still lack strong mobile broadband connectivity.
He said the definition of the digital gap is shifting from whether people are connected to whether they have reliable access where they live, work and move around.
“Every country has to come up with their own algorithm now,” he said.
Gorman urged the government to treat spectrum as more than a source of revenue.
“Spectrum is not just a national asset to sell. Actually, spectrum is an investment in the economy,” he said.
He also warned that public Wi-Fi programs should not distort the connectivity market.
“A free Wi-Fi system doesn’t necessarily do that,” he said, referring to creating an ecosystem where operators continue to deploy networks.
Whyte said the policies needed to attract investment have already been identified in the Konektadong Pinoy Act.
“Now that needs to be implemented, to be quite frank,” she said.
She cited Vietnam as a model. There, operators received a 15-percent discount for every base station they rolled out, up to the amount they paid for spectrum.
“[To attract] investments, you need the certainty,” Whyte said.
