Creation of DICT passed into law

Faster and cheaper internet access for progress

Rizal Philippines
June 1, 2016

From Business World - Pres Aquino signs into law RA 10844 which creates DICT

The House Bill 6198 which seeks to create a stand alone Department of Information and Technology was forwarded to the OP last May 10, 2016. and signed into a law last May 23, 2016 as RA 10844   It was approved by the  House of Reps in third and final reading in October 2015. It was second time that such bill was passed. The House failed to transmit this to the OP.   Pnoy saw no urgency for such a measure (What when we have the slowest internet speed in the Philippines)

The bill consolidates the IT related offices under DOST and DOTC.  The DOTC simply becomes a stand alone department of Transportation (so that it can focus on the Trains)

The new department it is hoped can address the slow internet speed in the Philippines

Is slow internet the result of bad politics?

Faster and cheaper internet access for progress

Rizal Philippines
January 4, 2016

Why is intenet so slow in the Philippines by Leticia Ramos Shahani Philstar 10/24

Indifferent public?

An indifferent public (the very poor readership and response of the netizens to this blog is an evidence.  Only 500 pageviews in more than 6 months?), poor regulations with privatization, monopoly all translate into poor and costly service for internet.  The author at Philstar has  included I all the factors that I have discussed in this site.

Monopoly (or duopoloy) are the culprits?

The monopoly invests so little in improving the backbone.  Still are copper wires and are touted to VIX in HK.  It does not go into peering (peering is free use of each other network to distribute signals or data)  As it is the monopoly is a toll monopoly.  All traffic that passes through its network is tolled

Let us repeat that Akami ranked PHL as 3rd slowest in the countries in Asia that were ranked.  The Phil 3 mbps costs as much as I Gbps in Singapore  at $36.01.  Oh yes, such is available in the Philippines at a hefty price from both Globe and PlDT at $368 per month or P20,000.  Yes it is all about profit and they want more. I thought internet or IT was the land of the free...

The regulators at their best even as mandated by law are comfortable with the powerful monopoly/business leaders.  While in other countries, the minimum speed was upped from 4 to 20 mbps, our regulators outshone them by setting the minimum speed for 256 mbps.  How sad?  The open competition espoused by FVR resulted in more telcos, more competition. But then, as regulators allowed the industry to contract by M and A, we are left with two telcos only that the NTC could not seem to regulate, it is the other way around. Here is a case of privatization, deregulation gone bad.  Did wristband have anything to do with this?

Baka the telco regulators naman maawa kayo sa publico. This post took me 1/2 day to complete. Hindi lang naman ito ginagawa ko.

Testing the internet speed.

I checked the internet speed test of Ookla (sponsored by Smart) and found out that my download speed was 3 Mbps while the upload speed was only 300 kbps which is of course higher than the required minimum speed of NTC of only 256 kbps.  Blame the regulators.(mabuti kamo di 28 kbps ang ginawang minimum)

You can check your internet speed by going to the sidebar and clicking the link.