For all citizens of the web residing in the Philippines, here is a bit of good news.
After our collective agony and protests about how slow the broadband speed or bandwidth is in the Philippines, there are two converging proposals that may soon relieve us of our pain or ultimately lead to the first on-line People Power in the Philippines.
In a very surprising but positive move, officials of the National Telecommunications Commission have come out with a “draft” Memorandum Order requiring broadband service providers to:
“specify the minimum broadband/internet connection speed and service reliability and the service rates in their offers to consumers/subscribers/users in their advertisements, flyers, brochures, and service agreements and service level agreements”.
At the very least, the move shows that the NTC has become more sensitive or aware of consumer demands and welfare, particularly in the field of telecommunications.
As expected the Philippine Chamber of Telecommunications Operators were not thrilled with the idea and quickly commented that under the NTC rules, broadband access service is a Value Added Service which is part of the deregulated services under the NTC rules. In other words “don’t touch”.
The PCTO executives are apparently clueless or deaf about the growing clamor of consumers that “WE” must know exactly what we are paying for. While the telcos always give us the “maximum speeds of up to” promise, they have never actually put in paper or committed to a minimum. So it is about time that we actually know what is the MINIMUM speed we are paying for.
Every perishable item in the grocery is required to print on their label the approximate size or weight of a given product as per the Bureau of Standards as well as the Department of Trade and Industry.
So with this latest development, there is now the possibility that “standards” will be set either by the telcos or preferably by the NTC who now has the ball in their court. Will they allow the telcos to tie them down because of established policies or will the NTC break from practice and lay down the rule?
Actually, the situation is about perception and the glass being half full or half empty. Consumers suspect their “speed” problem has to do with below minimum speed, while telcos claim the problem is that they can’t maximize the system for the greater good.
The good news is that “WE” can still have what we want in terms of stated minimum speeds as well as faster connectivity or bandwidth, if some form of compromise or convergence of practice can occur.
At the moment, many consumers are complaining that Broadband speed in the Philippines is slow. What many people don’t know is that a tiny group, approximately one percent of the broadband users in the country are “hogging” an estimated 40 percent of the operating bandwidth of all the telcos, which causes the “slowdown” on the bandwidth.
While most of us are private personal users, the one percent are subscribers registered as private users but operating as commercial establishments and businesses.
They are internet sites, gamers, on-line tutorial services, business establishments, offices, call centers and new media outfits or “individuals” that unlawfully download media content or movies by as much as 20 movies a day and sell them to clients with audio visual hard drives.
Even restaurants and coffee shops have used their WIFI systems to charge as much as P300 per hour and when you multiply these locations by the thousands nationwide, you quickly realize some people are making money while “our” quality of use is downgraded.
In other words there is presently no technical or legal tool that the telcos can use to segregate or differentiate between “us” ordinary day-to-day users from the commercial large scale — heavy users whose requirements suck the juice from the bandwidth resulting in a nationwide slow down of interconnectivity.
It is interesting to point out that Meralco, PLDT, even water utilities have different standards and requirements for customers who fall under heavy or commercial users. Given the impact on this limited resource, it is about time that those who profit hugely at our expense should shoulder some of our losses and our costs.
This is where the telcos are coming in with their proposal for a “FAIR USE POLICY” where those who use more should pay more. In this case, it is argued that the fair use policy will differentiate the commercial users versus ordinary individual users.
Exactly how the telcos or the industry can “meter” the consumption is beyond my comprehension, but the current proposal from the telco side is to implement a “Data Cap” or a limit to the total volume of use per user. From what I understand, ordinary — everyday users would not be affected because there is a wide margin of difference between average users versus heavy or commercial users.
The cap will zero in on the heavy or commercial users who will immediately find their “business or volumes” restricted by virtue of capacity, forcing them to upgrade or register on a higher level.
The telcos have all the information and stats in order to determine the difference numerically and in terms of megabytes versus gigabytes so it would be a simple matter of reviewing volume of usage. This practice is actually in force abroad and effectively causes heavy users to upgrade to the next level or subscribe as commercial clients.
Whether the added revenue will trickle down in the form of reduced costs to the bigger population of ordinary users will only be known after the fact, but like many consumer products, the higher the price, the more responsible people are in their consumption or use.
At the very least, the caps might put some more speed to our needs
* * *