WITH the second wave of the pandemic coming into full play, connectivity via the Internet is crucial to keep life under the new normal going. No less than the country’s chief executive has emphasized the key role that the Internet will play during this “new normal,” even threatening telcos of a government takeover if they will not improve their services by December.
In his fifth State of the Nation Address (Sona), Duterte claimed that the two telcos have been providing sub-par services to their customers, even going to the lengths of saying that they are overcharging their customers by charging them for mediocre services.
Are his statements true? Partially, as while Internet coverage is at now 95 percent of the total barangays and municipalities in the country—at least according to telcos—reliability still is an issue.
For Pierre Tito M. Galla, co-founder of consumer group Democracy.PH, Duterte’s tirades against the telcos during his Sona are “believable red herrings.”
“Because not only is speed an issue for many constrained to work from home, or prepare for home-based online classes, but the main issue is reliability, as nobody wants to get cut off in the middle of a task,” he said.
Duterte’s claims are not totally unfounded. Some users still experience static when making simple calls in the metro area, while some get bad service when they move around. The issue here, according to telcos, is the lack of telco towers that help transmit signal from one device to another.
Globe Telecom Inc. President Ernest L. Cu has repeatedly said that his group is ready to spend billions of pesos to develop its network infrastructure, but permitting from both the national and local governments have hindered the company from maximizing its programs.
“Each year, we make massive investments in billions of pesos to make our network perform at par with other countries. However, we can only go as far as what our existing infrastructure can give. If we want robust connectivity we really need to build more cell sites and roll out more fiber to homes. The current permitting process and fee structures simply do not allow us to do these,” Cu said.
He added that telcos have to secure at least 28 permits that take up to eight months before being approved for a single tower.
Endless ‘red tape’
ACCORDING to former Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Acting Secretary Eliseo M. Rio Jr., the lack of telco infrastructure was a result of the sudden popularity of mobile data.
In the early 2000s, he said, Filipinos were obsessed with texting, which did not require a lot of infrastructure to be sustained. But in 2012, mobile data became the new norm, and telcos scrambled to upgrade their infrastructure.
However, due to the bureaucratic “red tape,” telcos found it hard to quickly modernize their networks.
“We do not lack investments, as these are already available, not coming from government but from the private sector to fast track the installation of telecommunications infrastructure,” Rio said. “The real problem is the red tape that only government can solve.”
To address this, various government agencies have signed a joint memorandum circular that will streamline requirements and reduce procedural delays in securing permits, licenses, clearances, certificates and other requirements for common towers.
The new policy was signed by officials from the Department of Information and Communications Technology, the Anti-Red Tape Authority, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Department of Public Works and Highways, the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, the Department of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration
The policy essentially shortens the timeline for securing permits from 200 days to 16 days. It also removes five prerequisites for the construction of passive telecommunications tower infrastructure, such as those that are required by both the local and national governments.
Currently, the Philippines has 17,850 towers that serve over 100 million subscribers, or one tower per 4,000 subscribers—a far cry from the ideal tower density of one tower per 1,000 subscribers.
Obsession with towers
BUT for Galla, the public is so obsessed about towers that they are forgetting that there are alternatives to mobile data.
“This public fixation, even obsession, with towers is a reflection of how Internet access is mainly through cellular, or fixed wireless, when wired technologies provide more reliable Internet connectivity. Telcos are not the only providers of Internet connectivity,” he said, citing Internet service providers (ISPs) for instance.
“The best improvement that the telcos can make toward the ICT ecosystem would be for the telcos to cut their prices of the wholesale bandwidth they sell to ISPs. In this manner, rural ISPs can offer better services at costs farm families can afford,” he explained.
Benchmark?
PRESIDENT Duterte’s remarks during his Sona are welcomed by telcos, even as they are challenged with logistics, permits and mobility during the community quarantines.
For PLDT Inc. Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan, his group will take on this challenge by the country’s Chief Executive, and promised to provide better quality services to subscribers.
He noted, however, that there has to be a benchmark by which telcos will be judged, whether or not they have met the President’s demands.
“We’d like to agree with the regulator as to what standards we will be judged, the level of service that ought to be delivered to the people—download speed, upload speed, video experience, latency. At least that is something quantitative that we can be measured by,” he said.
Pangilinan’s group, which owns Smart Communications Inc., promised to extend coverage to 96 percent of the barangays and municipalities, as well as increase speeds to 30 Mbps.
“We should raise our ranking to something similar to Thailand and Vietnam,” he said.
Pangilinan added that his group has already engaged six tower companies to build at least 181 towers for Smart.
“There are more tower companies that we are speaking to, not only for the balance years but also for the coming years. Our network is much more complex than Globe’s—our problem’s a bit more Technicolor,” he said. “We just have to hunker down, and improve our services by December. We have to be laser-focused in achieving this.”
Galla agreed, saying that the benchmark should take into account “reliability” as it “is the most important parameter, next to cost—at least during this period.”
Key policies
But aside from hard infrastructure, what is equally needed are key policies that will enable a more robust ICT sector to thrive, especially since the new normal involves digitalizing most services.
“Due to the all-encompassing necessity of the Internet in our daily lives, we urge the government to adopt key policy reforms. We recommend four solutions: The Open Access in Data Transmission bill, an executive order to liberalize access to satellites as an alternative means of connectivity, especially for rural areas, a passive infrastructure-sharing policy to support the rollout of broadband networks, and, lastly, support for Internet service providers in the countryside,” independent ICT researcher Mary Grace Mirandilla-Santos, said.
Image credits: AP/Aaron Favila