MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines had an estimated eight million overseas workers deployed all over the world as of 2007, making it one of the biggest labor service providers in the world. In fact, the Philippines is the third largest provider of global labor, next only to China and India.
Filipinos are by nature closely bonded to family and loved ones — so imagine the millions of OFWs spending their hard-earned money to communicate with their loved ones in the Philippines on a regular basis. While high-tech communications are readily available — by cellular phone, landline and e-mail — the high cost of keeping connected makes even dollar-earners feel the pinch.
This situation had Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. chairman Efraim Genuino thinking about how families of OFWs coped. Then one fateful day, at a meeting with businessman Kim Go, he voiced his very concern.
Go recalled Genuino, who is now Abot Tanaw’s senior adviser, telling him: “There must be better ways for overseas Filipino workers and their families to communicate. Hearing the voice is good but nothing beats looking at a face while talking. The Internet is too complicated for many of our OFWs and it is too public.”
Upon hearing this and realizing the feasibility of such a proposition, Go decided to establish Abot Tanaw.
Abot Tanaw is a social media network that gives OFWs relief from the high-cost of keeping in touch with their families — in fact, the service is available for free.
“Abot Tanaw makes accessible to OFWs and their families the means to communicate without charging them. Using newly developed technology that involves voice and video telephony services, Abot Tanaw is able to lessen the proverbial toll that separation takes on Filipino families,” said Go, chief executive officer of Abot Tanaw.
Abot Tanaw’s vast infrastructure and patented technologies allow it to deliver quality communication services worldwide.
The vision of Abot Tanaw takes full advantage of Web-based technologies to provide valuable free communication access to families. This is a boon to families of OFWs that cannot afford mobile and Internet subscriptions and investments in hardware such as computers, mobile and PC phones.
In order to provide its services, Abot Tanaw is setting up service hubs, or its technical communication centers, at SM Malls. These service hubs contain call stations or call centers that deliver voice, video and telephony services to families of OFWs.
“There will be booths in SM Malls where, for the first few months, videoconferencing will be offered for free to OFWs,” Go said.
Sustaining the services
Given this set-up, one wonders how the business would be able to sustain itself. This is where innovation comes in.
While Abot Tanaw offers its services for free to end-users (the callers, in this case, the OFWs and their families), it taps potential sponsors to be able to sustain itself.
Access to Abot Tanaw services requires membership registration, giving it the capability to gather valuable information, set up a database of its users and their profiles, and build a captive market network.
In exchange, Abot Tanaw has designed an infrastructure through which its sponsors and advertisers would be able to communicate messages to their target markets.
For example, the vicinity of Abot Tanaw service hubs may be equipped with media for use by advertisers and sponsors. Note that these hubs are potentially high-traffic spots, given the types of services provided.
With more creativity, Abot Tanaw service hubs provide potentially new and powerful ways for sponsors to reach their audiences and target markets. As the service hubs gain more users among OFWs, their families and friends, its captive market potentials become even more attractive.
And Abot Tanaw’s captive market cannot be ignored. Just think: the combined remittances of OFWs to their families and beneficiaries reached $15.7 to $16.5 billion by end of 2008. This represents almost half of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ annual foreign exchange reserve.
Innovative in concept but thoroughly in touch with the current situation of OFWs, the vision of Genuino and Abot Tanaw of closing the gap that divides hundreds of thousands of families will soon be a reality.