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Mobile internet, 4G and 5G in the Philippines

The Philippines has three mobile operators: Globe Telecom, Smart Communications (PLDT) and DITO Telecommunity. For the first quarter of 2025 Globe reported 5G coverage of 98.71% in Metro Manila and 97.97% in key cities of the Visayas and Mindanao, alongside 235 new 5G sites, 487 new cell towers and 3,940 existing towers upgraded to LTE. Note what those figures are: Globe's own network, in the areas named. They are not national figures, and the regulator NTC publishes none in any form we could retrieve.

That coverage is uneven shows in the build programme itself: Globe reported 600 new cell sites in underserved areas, against a target of 700 by the end of 2025. DITO, meanwhile, publishes a coverage list down to barangay level for Metro Manila and provinces such as Batangas, Cebu, Cavite, Davao and Laguna. Across an archipelago of thousands of islands, that is the honest summary: strong in the urban centres, worth checking place by place beyond them.

Roaming in the Philippines without an eSIM

The Philippines is outside the EU and the EEA, so 'Roam Like at Home' does not apply. That arrangement covers the EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, along with Moldova and Ukraine, and the Philippines is not among them. Your Belgian or Dutch bundle therefore does not make the trip: your operator bills every megabyte at its own out-of-bundle roaming tariff, with none of the EU price caps that apply inside the zone. That weighs more here, because nobody flies to the Philippines for a long weekend. The European Commission advises checking the tariff with your provider first.

Philippine SIM registration: what the law asks of a tourist

The Philippines is one of the few destinations where the paperwork around a local SIM is written down in black and white. The SIM Registration Act — Republic Act 11934, approved on 10 October 2022 — requires every end-user to register their SIM with the operator as a prerequisite to activation, and provides that a SIM not registered within the prescribed period is deactivated automatically.

For a visitor the Act lists three items: a passport, proof of address in the Philippines, and a return ticket to your own country. The same text states that a registration obtained that way is valid temporarily for thirty days. The proof of address is the awkward part if you are staying in hotels or with family. Those requirements attach to registering a SIM with a Philippine operator; what you do with your own handset and your own subscription is a separate matter. We are going on the published text of the Act — check the current rules before you fly, since implementing regulations can change.