Zuckerberg says that access to internet will help eradicate poverty; will this impoverish ISP too?

Philippines September 28, 2015

In the address to the UN and in support of the ONE initiative, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief of Facebook has theorized that greater access to internet will help erase poverty in the world (possibly by 2030 - in 15 years)

We ask the opposite perhaps in the Philippines.  Will making internet faster and cheaper, ie making it more accessible make the ISPs poorer?  What do you think?

The ISPs are all ready awash with cash and profits, and yet do not do much, or do nothing to address the issue.  They say that this is due to over capacity and over subscription.  Well how do you address that?  By adding capacity, use of better technology, and that means cap ex.   May be they are not willing to make that investment. And the sad thing is we do not know the whole story, so are our regulators and govt officials.

Will greater internet access make the ISPs poorer?

The sad thing is that only 3 out of  10 Filipinos, according to the UN report have internet access.  What happens to the 7 others?   (Only 37% of Filipinos From Rappler - Broadband report  have internet access, placing Philippines 106th out of 191 countries evaluated. Will having less in life mean that they will have less opportunity?

This is rather disturbing because we thought that private initiative will only have the best interest of the public as priority.

Analysis and proposed solutions on slow internet speed in the Philippines ( 7 out of 10 Filipinos have no internet access)

Philippines  September 27, 2015

From Rappler Technology Features

Why is internet speed slow in the Philippines?  The answer does not look simple.  As with other problems, the problem's causes are systemic

This is featured in Rappler and a result of interview with Bayani Lara, Supervising Science Research Specialist at the Department of Science and Technology's Advance Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) and part of the team that runs the Philippine Open Internet Exchange (PHOpenIX).

1  Lack of IP peering as between Globe and Smart, that means that in order for the two system to talk, the system has to get out of the country and say be rerouted to Hong Kong (this jibes with an earlier analysis that PLDT does this)

From Reddit - How PLDT keeps internet speed deliberately slow

2.  The solution would be to have a central internet exchange, but the backbone owner says that this would give undue advantage to small players.

Mark Zuckerberg, Chief of Facebook calls internet access a global priority

Philippines September 27, 2015


Mark Zuckerberg addresses UN General Assembly

Mark Zuckerberg addressed the United Nations twice to make internet access a global priority.  He addressed the UN Sustainable Development Conference, and later the UN Private Sector where UN Sec Gen  Ban Ki-moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were present

“Connecting the world is one of the fundamental challenges of our generation,” Zuckerberg said. “More than 4 billion people don’t have a voice online.”

In the Philippines, faster and cheaper internet access is a big challenge. 7 out of 10 Filipinos according to UN report do not have internet access.  This is sad.  Thus we should be concerned and pay attention to this news.