PH Internet needs changes and a champion

FOR the past few weeks, we’ve heard a couple of “solutions” to our problems around the speed, quality, and reach of Internet services in the Philippines. Let’s take a look at some of them and offer our own. Let’s also ask: Is there anyone out there ready and willing to be the country’s first Digital Leader and Tech President?

First, we have the new circular of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) which seeks to measure the speed of wired broadband Internet services.

This is actually a non-solution, for the problem is clearly not the absence of speed tests. Independent speed tests – whether local or international, big or small – have helped inform everyone of the real problem: Internet services in the Philippines are slowest in the region and among the slowest in all of Asia. Only Afghanistan is said have crappier Internet.

By limiting its scope only to wired broadband, the NTC circular ignores the basic fact that majority of end-users use mobile or wireless broadband to connect to the Internet. The circular is thus useless to the majority.

Second, quite a number have called for “more competition” and “more liberalization” as a solution. They claim that with new competitors and investors, we would have more choices and the telecommunications industry would be compelled to provide better services.

But the story of the telecommunications industry since 1995 has always been about competition and liberalization.

Competition resulted in a telecommunications industry that is basically a duopoly of two corporations. PLDTSmart and Globe were allowed to legally gobble up erstwhile competitors, thereby reducing the number of players from around half a dozen a decade ago to a current grand total of two at present.

Foreign investors are also not new in the industry. For many years now, Japan’s NTT and Singapore’s Singtel have substantive investments in PLDT-Smart and Globe, respectively. The erstwhile competitors now owned by PLDT-Smart and Globe also had their own foreign investors. Examples: Deutsche Telekom for Islacom and Telia Sonera for Sun Cellular.

Thanks to both competition and liberalization, PLDT-Smart and Globe have become multibillion-peso corporations, with their owners and foreign investors getting rewarded regularly by handsome dividends. In the 1H of 2015 alone, the combined net income of the two telcos reached 40 billion. But we have to state the obvious: The telcos’ race for superprofits have far outpaced Philippine Internet speeds.

The situation now is that we have 40 million already connected to the Internet through two telcos, with an overwhelming majority on mobile and wireless broadband. Those already connected do not get what we supposedly pay for as telcos claim in their advertisements: Fiber Internet, 2G, 3G, 4G, WIMAX, and LTE. The other 60 are still waiting to be connected.

If we are to solve our Internet woes, we must first have standards on which to assess the telcos’ services.

This means the NTC should immediately review its circular, resist telco pressure, and adopt current definitions on what broadband Internet means. For in the absence of such standards, the investments it will be making to undertake its monthly speed tests would be meaningless.

We urge the NTC to adopt current International Telecommunications Union standards on the existing technologies used by the telcos. That means both telcos should be pushed and compelled by the NTC to deliver what is legally their obligation to deliver. For instance, if a telco sells LTE or fiber Internet, it should be able to deliver LTE or fiber Internet as defined by internationally accepted standards.

Congress should also review both Republic Act 7925 and Commonwealth Act 146 of 1936, the two laws governing telecommunications in the Philippines. When they do so, lawmakers should seriously consider declaring Internet a public utility, akin to water and power.

For if the Internet is pivotal to the country’s present and future, Congress should give it importance and protection from abuse by corporations that control its delivery to individuals, homes, government agencies, and businesses. (It is also important to note that the US Federal Communications Commission has already ruled that the Internet is a public utility, and the ruling provided a basis for its net neutrality policy.)

Amending both RA 7925 and CA 146 should also result in a stronger NTC, with sufficient powers to protect end-users, punish telco abuses, and promote freedom and innovation. At present, the laws could only empower the NTC to impose fines of 250/day or a maximum of 25,000. Its powers and prerogatives cannot sufficiently rein in the powerful duopoly on top of an industry pampered by policies of competition and liberalization.

What else could be done? The Philippines needs a plan for rolling out and speeding up the Internet around the country. If the governments of South Korea, Singapore, and other countries with the fastest Internet could plan for what every household, office, or mobile user should have in five, ten, or 15 years – what’s stopping us from doing so?

Simply put, we need a future-ready Internet connectivity roadmap – with clear state and private roles, with targets for speed and coverage, with investments for infrastructure fit for our archipelagic country, with a strong emphasis on making the Internet an enabler for innovation and entrepreneurship, and with strong protection for end-users’ rights and liberties. The absence of such a roadmap would mean we would have more of the same awful Internet services, with only a tiny few scoring tens of billions of pesos from it.

Other countries have done this. No reason why we should not also do it, considering that we’re known to have the slowest Internet services. E-commerce and startup communities are ready. End-users and consumers are open for new solutions.

And with the elections only months away, we sound off not just our lawmakers hoping to unlock technologyenabled potentials we have around the country. We hope the aspirants for the presidency are listening and know better than to protect duopolies and oligopolies. This is an issue waiting for a champion. This is a country waiting to have a Digital Leader or a Tech President who will preside over the explosion of Internet-powered, entrepreneurship-driven, mass-based, and inclusive prosperity for all.

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