MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is seeking assistance from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to fast-track the implementation of a law establishing free internet access in public places.
In a social media post yesterday, Information and Communications Technology Secretary Eliseo Rio said the government should invest in telecommunications infrastructure to pursue programs under the Free WiFi Law as it could not depend merely on local commercial telcos.
“The lesson learned here is that at present, our commercial telcos, specially the giants Globe and PLDT/Smart, are not geared to providing WiFi hotpots with sufficient bandwidth in public places,” Rio said.
“While the government has the funds to pay the subscription costs for say 50 Mbps CIR (committed information rate) bandwidth in state universities and colleges and other public places, our telecommunication industry just can’t deliver in many of these locations.”
“It is now clear that our local telcos can’t presently cope up with our demand for free WiFi access points. It is for this reason that we are pursuing another approach to implement the Free WiFi Law using the DICT 2018 budget for this. We are seeking the help of the UNDP to bring in foreign companies and technology to set up a national free WiFi network, to train our people and telcos on roll-outs done in other countries with very successful free WiFi programs,” he added.
Rio explained that the country’s biggest telcos’ business model has always been to roll out their infrastructure to where they get the most paying subscribers.
He said the free WiFi locations are mostly in public places that were never in these telcos’ business plans to put internet connectivity.
“So their connections were limited to places where they have already commercial point-of-presence, but unfortunately reaches a very small percentage of where we want our free WiFi zones to be,” he explained.
According to Rio, only 807 free WiFi access points became operational from February 2015 to September 2017.
Rio said upon his entry as officer-in-charge of DICT on Oct. 10, 2017 and when the bidding was opened up to small players and internet service providers (ISPs), the number of free WiFi sites increased from 807 to 1,592 as of Aug. 23, 2018.
“But since the ISPs are all dependent on Globe and PLDT/Smart for their internet transport, the ability of ISPs to put up access points again depends on the point-of-presence of these two telcos. But by using ISPs, with the two major players increasing their point-of-presence, we project to light up 6,881 sites by end of 2018,” Rio said.
Aside from seeking assistance from the UNDP, other efforts are underway to fast-track the implementation of the Free WiFi Law.
Rio said the DICT has signed a tripartite agreement with Facebook and Bases Conversion and Development Authority to put up two cable landing stations to be owned by the government.
A tripartite agreement with TransCo and the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines has also been made to use the almost 6,200 kilometers of dark fiber of the national electric grid to be the backbone of the National Broadband Plan that will be extensively used in the free WiFi program.
Rio said a partnership with the National Electrification Administration has also been signed to enable the government to put up its own point-of-presence in every province and municipality so that it would be within reach of all ISPs.