5 Biggest Stories in Philippine Tech in 2021

The year 2021 saw a lot of controversial, viral, or trending stories that got a lot of us excited and talking about. Some are anticipated while a few came as a shock. They’re a mixed bag of stories too.

Here are the top 5 tech stories we thought really represented the year 2021 in the Philippines.

DITO opens up shop.

Third-telco DITO finally opens up shop in Metro Manila last May 2021. An initial list of areas covered by their network to both excitement and frustration of many consumers expecting to try and avail of really low opening promos (Unli Data for only Php499USD 9INR 721EUR 8CNY 62).

Since then, DITO has been adding new areas to extend its coverage and increase subscriber capacity. The telco has also announced it will roll out broadband services early this year.

Converge bumps Residential Broadband with crazy Speeds.

Converge ICT has been on a roll in the past couple of years. Since they ramped up the rollout of broadband fiber across the country, the company posed a strong challenge against the two leading providers Globe and PLDT.

Converge offers very affordable fiber internet starting with 50Mbps for only Php1,500USD 26INR 2,167EUR 24CNY 186 all the way up to 800Mbps for only Php3,500USD 60INR 5,056EUR 57CNY 434. This puts the Philippines at par, if not better, with other neighboring ASEAN nations in terms of broadband speeds.

The upgrade to 800Mbps from 200Mbps prompted rival competitors to immediately upgrade their broadband plans as well. PLDT tried to match Converge with Plan 3799 with 600Mbps. That’s competition at work right there.

JaMill’s Deleted YouTube.

One of the biggest YouTube vloggers in the Philippines are the couple Jayzam Llloyd Manabat and Camille Trinidad or popularly known as ‘JaMill’ (incidentally, we didn’t actually cover this story). The official statement from the couple points to a failing relationship. That’s over 12 million subscribers they amassed thru the years. However, since the majority of their 7-digit revenue comes from YouTube ads, the move does not make any practical sense.

Coincidentally, there has been news circulating that the Bureau of Internal Revenue is investigating a popular influencer couple, theories surrounding that the deletion of Jamill’s YouTube channel has something to do with the investigation — that deleting the YouTube channel would also dispose of the evidence of how much they are actually earning from Google.

The couple eventually opened up a new YouTube channel after a few weeks and but the couple has since decided to split their video content on each individual channel (the biggest with 750k subscribers).

Axie Infinity.

Axie’s popularity stemmed from the fact that anyone can go and start breeding monsters called Axies and eventually earn Etherium. This financial incentive is what drove its popularity, especially among Filipinos (currently the most number of players in the platform).

Axie Infinity runs on blockchain technology. However, instead of mining new blocks on the chain (solving complex math problems that generate an accepted hash), Axie Infinity provides a ‘play-to-earn’ structure. Players can earn by competing in PVP battles, breeding Axies and selling them on the marketplace, or collecting rare Axies. Do note that Smooth Love Potions (SLP) are needed to breed Axies. SLPs, like any other cryptocurrency, are volatile.

What is Axie Infinity and Should You Play?

A lot of enterprising people invested in Axie by getting scholars ( “scholarship” in Axie Infinity is when a manager/breeder gives out a free Axie team to a scholar who will then play the game to earn and share profits with).

Of course, there’s a risk to all this and as of today, an SLP is worth only Php1.13USD 0.02INR 2EUR 0.02CNY 0.14 (-42.9% from 30 days ago) from an all-time high of Php17.35USD 0.30INR 25EUR 0.28CNY 2. That’s a big dip.

BDO Hacking.

Perhaps the biggest and most controversial story in 2021 is the widespread hacking of online BDO accounts by as many as 700 customers. Numerous unauthorized withdrawals were made via BDO online and were reportedly transferred to another unknown account in UnionBank. The UnionBank account was made under a false name (this was possible because anyone can open up a UB account online without proper KYC) and was then used to buy Bitcoin worth over Php5USD 0.09INR 7EUR 0.08CNY 0.62 million (which is untraceable due to the nature of cryptocurrencies).

How the hacking was done is still unknown but the most plausible theory is that BDO’s 10-year old system had a vulnerability allowing the culprit to bypass the OTP authentication of target users.

While BDO has willingly refunded those who lost their savings from the hack, this incident has caused widespread panic from existing customers prompting them to move their money elsewhere.

Just a few weeks prior, S&R Membership Shopping also announced that there was a breach in their membership database causing their system to go offline for a while. This, after controversial Xian Gaza publicly posted about the leaked a few days before.