More towers for better connectivity

It’s agonizing to watch a child, who’s trying to learn a math problem on his tech device, forced to bury his head in his arms in front of the monitor every so often while waiting for a better connection. Other kids farther away from urban centers may be grappling under worse conditions.

This pandemic has definitely magnified the daily exasperations that our mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop personal computers suffer. Now, more than ever, people forced to shelter at home need a more reliable internet connection that does not stutter and splutter.

The duopoly of PLDT/Smart and Globe may have been celebrating improvements in connectivity during the last few years, but the unsavory truth remains that the Philippines still has the third slowest internet speed in the world, and charges the second highest price in Asia.

Add to these serious handicaps is the poor coverage performance of the duopoly during its almost three decades of corporate operations in the industry, where over 40 percent of the country continue to be underserved or not served at all.

Excuses, excuses

Lately, Undersecretary Ramon “RJ” Jacinto of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has been raising issue against the duopoly’s oft-repeated excuses about how difficult it is to improve services.

To expand connectivity and make cellular service more reliable, the two companies have been citing the difficulty of securing permits to build towers that will hoist cellular radios needed to improve bandwidth, speed, and coverage of a network.

RJ contends that the yearly allocation set aside by the two companies is proof of their reluctance, rather than timidity, in investing in towers, just as their stubbornness remains not to share, but build separate towers even if these are located near each other.

He noted that even if the two firms had doubled their commitments this year to build towers, this still reflected poorly on them especially when the third telco – Dito Telecommunity – managed to build 300 towers in just three months.

Finding better solutions

If the government had just left the duopoly to dominate the market without setting performance standards, they would likely have kept complaining about the difficulty of getting permits to build towers without really looking for better solutions.

Something can be done, it turns out. Since the start of President Duterte’s term in 2016, the government has been hammering a plan to straighten out all the bottlenecks plaguing the telecommunications industry.

The first move was to “commission” a third player that would “break the duopoly” of Smart and Globe through a set of deliverables that included expanded service coverage and an improved average internet speed of 27 megabits per second when it starts commercial rollout in March 2021.

After delivering 300 operational cell sites recently, Dito reaffirmed its commitment to complete the construction of 2,000 towers by the end of the year, thus putting it in a position to deliver coverage to at least 37 percent of the population.

Independent tower companies

In 2018, the newly-minted Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) came up with the concept of tower sharing, which notably would allow the entry of independent tower companies to two or more mobile and data services operators to jointly utilize the infrastructure.

The concept was modeled on what is being done in almost all countries that have expanded their services to a wider swathe of consumers at a more efficient rate and lower price. Indonesia, for example, is glaring proof that being archipelagic is no reason not to have a wider coverage, faster speeds, and lower rates.

The DICT is hell-bent on bringing the number of towers to an ideal 50,000 through independent tower companies. With independent tower companies, telcos can concentrate on buying the cellular radios to expand their coverage.

RJ says that that duopoly has managed to build only 20,000 towers today since operations started. Because the tower locations of the two companies are often near each other, this has effectively halved the number of towers to 10,000, leaving the gap that needs to be filled at 40,000.

‘Permitting problem’

To solve once and for all the “permitting problem” in building towers, the DICT streamlined guidelines for the issuance of permits, licenses, and certificates for the construction of shared towers, thus bringing the length of time to get a permit from nine months to just 16 days.

The government has also given credence to the “permitting problem” through the second installment of the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, which has passed the bicameral debates. The bill, when signed into law by the President, will call for a three-year suspension of all permits to build cell towers, except for a building permit.

Sen. Frank Drilon noted that the proposed law would stipulate that only the Supreme Court should be able to issue a temporary restraining order against construction of telecom infrastructure.

Even if the age of better and cheaper internet service is still about a year down the line, at a time perhaps when the pandemic will not longer require stay-at-home orders, it is something that Filipinos can look forward to and use to their heart’s content to improve their lives.

It would be nice to see farmers or fisher folks checking out the weather, or getting guidance on the market situation of their produce through their smartphones, or teachers in provinces learning how to improve their lesson plans through webinars – all because they can afford to connect online with ease and at lower costs.

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