The Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) is set to upgrade Wi-Fi signals in over 90 tourist sites next year to allow more people to work from these areas.

"This coming year, 2023, we will be significantly connecting and upgrading all of these tourist areas in order to have better quality and higher availability of Wi-Fi signals," Information and Communications Secretary Ivan John Uy said in a press conference in Malacanang last Tuesday.

"We’re encouraging not only tourists who come and visit temporarily, but also those who are with the gig economy and travelling and working from anywhere," Uy said.

Gig or platform employment, said the International Labor Organization, are digital labor platforms, "where work is outsourced through an open call to a geographically dispersed crowd, and location-based applications (apps) which allocate work to individuals in a specific geographical area, typically to perform local, service-oriented tasks such as driving, running errands or cleaning houses."

"As the President has mentioned…'Why work from home when you can work from the beach?' ? and the Philippines have very, very beautiful resorts and tourist areas that they can work from," he added.

The initiative is part of DICT's efforts to "aggressively" improve the country's communication systems to foster "connectivity and digitalization." DMS