Globe seeks new IP peering policy

MANILA, Philippines - Globe Telecom is urging the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to order all Internet service providers (ISPs) in the Philippines to deliver and receive traffic between domestic end-points free of Internet peering charges and without passing the traffic across the national border.

In a position paper submitted to the NTC on the proposed IP peering policy, Globe said there is no reason why domestic Internet traffic should first be routed internationally before being transmitted back to the Philippines to its destination network.

“Neither is there any reason why such traffic, when ultimately local between point A and point B, should be charged interconnect rates. Just as subscribers of two different telephone companies residing within the same province should not be assessed long distance charges when calling each other, consistent with the ‘one province, one rate’ rule, neither should they suffer the burden of said charges when exchanging purely in-country Internet traffic consistent with the one nation, one rate principle,” it pointed out.

IP peering is similar to interconnection among public telecommunications entities for voice and SMS except that it applies to the Internet space. The subscribers and/or applications of one ISP connect to the subscribers and/or applications of another ISP via IP peering, Globe earlier explained.

Aside from proposing that data packets that originate and will terminate in the country must stay here and should be free from interconnect charges, Globe also suggested the inclusion of penalties against ISPs that refuse to comply with NTC’s proposed circular within 30 days from the date that a requesting ISP asks for said IP interconnection.

As for the NTC proposed requirement that “all ISPs in the Philippines with a direct connection to a foreign ISP must connect to the IP exchange of the Advance Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology, Globe corporate and legal services group head Froilan Castelo said this imposition should apply only to those ISPs that do not have any Internet peering arrangements with other carriers.

This, Globe said, is especially true of new or start-up Internet-only value added service providers. “Existing Internet peering arrangements however, such as those in force between Globe and other ISPs, ought to be maintained and left undisturbed,” it emphasized.

Globe earlier said that developing a domestic IP peering policy will help negate circuitous data traffic routes and set minimum service performance standards that will improve consumer experience and can lower the price of Internet access.

It explained that there are times when customer experience is degraded due to longer IP peering routes which are used as a workaround in the absence of a local IP peering arrangement. This would require then that several routes, sometimes even via international routes, are used to connect even to local websites hosted by ISPs that do not have a local peering agreement.

“When data is routed outwards, say internationally first, before landing at its target destination, it wastes (international) capacity and resources. Consumers, unaware of the IP traffic routing taking place, are needlessly burdened by sluggish response times and lower quality levels. When IP traffic needs to go from point A to point B- especially when both points are located within the Philippines – the transmission route taken ought to be the most direct, and certainly not international. This will immediately result in a faster, better Internet access experience for consumers,” Globe said.

The Ayala-owned telco noted that the circuitous routing of data represents additional cost for the sending party (and the consumer) because today, the peering partner can charge a fee for serving data transmission requirements – in an unfair sense even for domestic peering with data pushed out of the country.

“This notwithstanding the fact that domestic IP peering should ideally be free-of-charge following the simple logic that consumer and service providers only want to ply and pay for a domestic route, not an international one for purely domestic traffic,” Globe said.