I think significant internet infrastructure changes are coming..
Whether by accident or design, the Philippines economic model is increasingly relying on the call centre industry, and professional outsourcing services - like IT coding, accounting etc. (Peter Zeihan 2022) Also, like everywhere else, the Philippines public want to be connected internationally for family contact, social media, and entertainment. This should, in theory, provide business opportunities for national/local internet providers.
Until now, internet infrastructure has been lacking, or needlessly limited in bandwidth, and is demonstrated by the frustrations voiced in the conversation above. This includes myself, and drives me to distraction when I try calling Philippines from UK during high-traffic times.
Our farm and guesthouse are located on the out-of-the-way island of Bantayan Island, north of Cebu Island. The town of Santa Fe is a tourist hub, whereas we live toward the north of the island, near the town of Madridejos.
Visiting Madridejos is like going back in time. You might be familiar with this type of place: Grown men riding customers around on tricycles to an outdated wet-market. The local college, MCC, which has a 4000 student capacity (and growing), has no landline telephone connection. The college phone number (that's still listed on the FB page), was taken out by Typhoon Yolanda in 2013 and never replaced. Nothing works, and it doesn't seem to matter. Any youth with ambition simply heads to a big city to take their chances, or better still, gets work as an OFW.
This is all changing. For the last two months our guesthouse has been occupied by engineers and technicians (from a Hong Kong based company) setting up the 5G tower network across our island. A high-speed fibre optic cable is being laid between Bacolod, traveling via Bantayan Island on route to Cebu City. Local businesses are being approached to see if they'd be interested in reselling third-party (local) internet packages, hooked up directly to the fibre-optic network. Things are moving.
Presumably this will immensely affect the quality of the internet services, the local economy and ultimately provide opportunities for the community.聽 Looking at the "National Broadband Plan 2017 (Draft)", big changes are afoot, and coming to a Philippines location near you.
The document is long, heavy with acronyms, and gets quite technical - so I only understood a limited amount. @Calif-Native would get more I'm sure, by looking at his clever content.
Some encouraging points of note are:
1. Plans to share existing infrastructure (which should alleviate bottlenecking and optimize resources).
2. Plans to provide funding for local providers, and offer licence provision.
3. Macro-funding by government for terrestrial and satellite (service) infrastructure.
4 Growth needs analysis. Ie identify "growth centres", look to target high demographic areas, establish progress monitoring, like when submarine cables have been laid and hubs are operative.
5.Incentives to broadband users including in rural areas.
There's much more, but looks like the wheels are turning...
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