The Philippine ISP industry

According to the Institute for Development and Econometric Analysis, Inc. latest Industry Trends, Internet Service Providers, as the name suggests, provide Internet connection to users. Users can be households, individuals, and firms. Internet connection is supplied by the ISPs primarily through digital subscriber line and, more recently, through mobile data with the proliferation of smart phone use.

Per IDEA, the gross value added of the communication industry grew by 7.98 percent in 2012 and 5.11 percent in 2013. The industry experienced a slowdown in 2009 and 2010, during the global financial crisis, but it picked up in 2011. An info graphic by ASEAN DNA, a site reporting on Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, has been the talk of the town recently. It shows that the Philippines’ average Internet speed, at 3.6 megabytes per second (mbps), is the slowest in the ASEAN region. The ASEAN average is 12.6 mbps. Furthermore, a year's worth of analyzed data from Internet metrics firm Ookla shows that the Philippines has a general Internet speed of around 3.55 mbps, ranking it as 155th of 190 countries. The data were gathered from April 2013 to March 2014.

According to the 2010 Survey on Information and Communication Technology for Information Economy, which surveys establishments in the Information and Communication Technology and the Content and Media Sector, nine out of 10 establishments surveyed reported to have Internet access.

Presence of a website was reported by 43.4 percent of establishments in 2010, a slight pick-up from the preceding two years. More than 20 percent of establishments utilize the Internet for business. It is evident that Internet use for commercial purposes is growing. However, unless the slow and expensive Internet is resolved, commercial use of Internet may be deemed unreliable and not worthwhile by some businesses.

Establishments also used the Internet in transacting with government agencies as more government agencies maintained websites and more establishments had Internet access in the past three years. Seventy-eight per cent of the establishments used Internet to obtain information from government organisations in 2010. It grew by more than 20 percentage points compared to 56.2 percent reported in 2008 and 4 percentage points compared to 74.1 percent in 2009.

Furthermore, as per same published report, according to the 2010 Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry, for each peso in cost, telecommunications establishments earn Php1.8 in revenue. Moreover, value added per worker is Php4.6 million. Also, based on the survey, labor costs of telecommunications firms comprise 16.74 percent of total costs. Gross addition to tangible fixed assets amounted to Php44.59 million. Telecommunications firms have to constantly make capital additions, according to the researchers of IDEA.

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