SHIFTING from a set of “landline-era policies” to digitally enabling regulations and practices may help improve the Philippines’s ranking in competitiveness reports, all while creating a huge impact on both the macroeconomy and individuals.
This was the shared view of the Internet coalition Better Broadband Alliance (BBA) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary Eliseo M. Rio Jr., who both agree that technology development will play a key role in improving the ranking of the Philippines in the next Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum.
Grace Mirandilla-Santos, the convener of the alliance, said the development of the digital economy through better infrastructure has a significant impact in the economy.
Citing reports from the World Bank and Ericsson, she said a 10-percent increase in broadband penetration results in a 1.38-percent increase in GDP, while a 0.5-Mbps broadband connection can help a household make as much as $800 per year in additional income.
“Thus, the cost to the Philippine economy of poor Internet access and slow Internet speed can be enormous. The main culprit: using analog policy in the digital age,” she said. “Outdated policies have resulted in: 50 million Filipinos still offline; fixed and mobile broadband connections among the slowest in the world; and broadband services that remain unaffordable to a large segment of society, especially those living in the rural areas.”
Due to commercial implications, mobile network operators tend to deploy telco infrastructure in urban areas and densely populated rural areas. But those facilities are not enough to provide speeds that are on a par with Asean neighbors.
Often, the Philippines finds itself in the bottom three of Opensignal, Ookla and Akamai’s Internet connectivity reports for Asia and the Pacific. This, even as the country is deemed home to one of the most “social peoples” in the world .
According to Mirandilla-Santos, this reality is the culprit behind the Philippines’s dropping in the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum for 2019.
The country ranked 64th out of 141 economies in the world, or eight places lower than its finish in 2018, indicating that the Philippines failed to create an enabling environment for improved human capital and productivity that is supported by an innovation ecosystem for wealth generation.
The Philippines also had a poor ranking in ICT adoption, which is measured by the population’s subscription to mobile and fixed services and the rate of access versus the population. It booked a solid 20-percent difference to 50 points versus its peers in East Asia and the Pacific, including less developed nations.
Needed legislation
Mirandilla-Santos said her group is urging lawmakers to pass laws that will update the “landline-era” policies and promote digital connectivity.
“In particular, BBA partners strongly support the Open Access in Data Transmission bill, which is critical to establishing a forward-looking and future-ready digital policy framework for the Philippines,” she said.
Previously sponsored by former senator Paolo Benigno A. Aquino IV, the bill aims to create the space for different types of service providers to build and operate data networks. It proposes a simplified registration and qualification process in order to attract more players to invest in much-need data transmission infrastructure.
It likewise encourages infrastructure sharing to make network deployment faster and more cost-efficient, promotes transparency in spectrum management, and mandates interconnection among operators.
Aquino did not see the bill passed during his term, but Sen. Ralph G. Recto re-filed it in July this year.
Vision 2020 to aid in infra development
For his part, Rio, an undersecretary for the ICT department, agreed with the view of the Internet coalition, noting that his group has been voicing this out for quite some time now.
“Our infrastructure are overwhelmed and congested. So we really have to improve our infrastructure so that we can at least improve our services,” he told the BusinessMirror. “Improving our infrastructure can definitely help us improve our ranking.”
In terms of policies, Rio said the government has adopted Vision 2020, an overarching plan to improve the physical infrastructure for the digital economy. Under the plan, the government aims to end 2020 with better Internet coverage, speed, and lower costs of services through critical infrastructure development programs, namely, the Luzon Bypass Infrastructure, the Dark Fiber Network, the National Broadband Network, the Free Wi-Fi in Public Places, and the Third Telco Initiative.
Luzon Bypass Infrastructure, being constructed by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) in partnership with Facebook, will be a 250-kilometer cable network corridor that will provide a terrestrial bypass route for international submarine cable owners. It will have a capacity of two terabits per second, which is almost equal to the combined capacity of incumbent telcos.
The Dark Fiber Network, on the other hand, involves the utilization of the fiber backbone of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) and the National Transmission Corp. for the use of the two energy companies’ dark fiber facilities that span 6,154 kilometers across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
Meanwhile, the National Broadband Network is the program for the development and deployment of a mixture of several Internet connectivity technologies, such as fixed line and mobile data, among others, all over the Philippines—including missionary areas.
The Free Wi-Fi program, on the other hand, involves the deployment of Wi-Fi connectivity in public spaces such as schools, government offices, parks, hospitals and other locations all over the Philippines to help connect Filipinos to the Internet. The ICT department targets to install a total of 8,073 operational live sites for the year 2019.
Lastly, the third telco initiative pertains to the introduction of new competition in the telco market. Its adjacent program, the Common Towers Initiative, will play a key role in making sure that the third telco—and the incumbent players—will have sufficient towers to provide access and better services to more Filipinos.
“Our goal is by 2020, we will have the infrastructure that we need,” Rio said. “We still have a lot of catching up to do, but our target is by 2020, we will enjoy faster speeds, better quality of service, improved coverage and lower costs.”
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