We’ve all been there: staring at a smartphone in a public plaza, technically connected to a free government network, but unable to load a single webpage. Now, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is giving Filipinos a way to see what’s happening with the Philippines’ public Wi-Fi network.

The agency has opened its Network Monitoring System (NMS V2) to the public. Previously an internal tool used by the DICT to monitor the Free Wi-Fi for All program, the dashboard is now accessible through the Services section of the DICT website. It provides information on monitored Wi-Fi sites nationwide, including availability, connectivity status, uptime, reported incidents, and compliance with service-level agreements.

You can drill down by region, province, and municipality, giving you a clearer picture of how individual access points are performing in schools, communities, and other public areas. The DICT said it has been using NMS V2 internally since last year to monitor network performance, manage incidents, conduct audits, and generate reports.

Update from the DICT

Opening the dashboard to the public is part of the agency’s push for greater transparency and accountability around the government’s free Wi-Fi service. It also gives citizens another way to check whether a monitored site is operational instead of simply taking the network’s availability for granted.

And if the numbers don’t match what users are experiencing on the ground, the DICT wants to hear about it. The agency said the public can submit feedback, report service outages, or escalate issues through the 1326 Citizen Complaint Center hotline, by emailing 1326@dict.gov.ph, or through the eReport feature of the eGovPH Super App.

The dashboard doesn’t magically make a dead Wi-Fi connection work. But for the first time, we can get a closer look at whether the government’s free Wi-Fi network is actually up and running in our area.