Philippines' telecom company keeps cracking down on illegal sites

Illegal gambling domains in the Philippines have continued to increase, as the country is trying to crack down on mostly land-based gambling that operates without a license. Yet, not everyone is standing idly by as offshore gambling sites target the country’s residents and shower them with bonus offers and other incentives to play.

Globe Telecom Inc, a Philippines telecommunications company, blocked 1,345 domains from its network in the first quarter of the year, acknowledging that these websites were offering "illegal gambling," and marking a significant increase in the efforts put by the private company to restrict the access of such third-party websites to the market in the country.

"We have an ethical obligation to make the internet safer and are continuing our relentless push to identify and prevent access to these unlawful sites on our network," said Globe in a statement, with the company investing further $2.7m into improving its capabilities to block access to websites that may be breaking the law or operate without the necessary license in the country.

On an annual basis, this is a 967% increase in the number of issued blocks from the first quarter of 2023. Globe offered details as to how it had proceeded with the blocking, first targeting 260 gambling sites in January, and following up with another 855 domains in February, to top it all off with 230 in March.

Globe has not been as active in blocking gambling sites in previous years, however, with the company only acted against 52 or so sites in 2021, only to increase the pressure to 396 sites in 2022, and significantly amp up its efforts in 2023, with 4,237 websites blocked in total over the course of the last year.

Globe has not really taken much time to deliberate as to what sites should be blocked like some other regulators, such as the Australian Communications and Media Authority, have done. As a private company, the telecoms has acted quickly and on their own, without the need to run through often complicated and long-winded processes.

Raising awareness about illegal gambling has been part of many markets’ efforts to protect consumers, on top of measures such as blocking individual websites. Globe Telecom Inc. has cast a vast net to ensure that websites deemed illegal are not accessing the market.

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