AS IF IT is not enough for the Philippines to have the unique distinction of having the most expensive cost of electricity in the world, we now also have the unique distinction of having the slowest internet speed in the world, never mind Afghanistan because it is in a state of war.
Not only do we have the slowest internet speed, we actually have the highest cost also, if you can figure that out.
That is actually a mystery to many of us, somehow akin to the mystery why we are importing rice even if we are an agricultural country, and why we are importing fish meal even if we are an archipelagic country. Never mind why we are importing wool from New Zealand, because they have more sheep than people there, while we have more mobile phones than people here.
A friend of mine who is a computer expert and whom I regard to be a technology genius explained to me that in reality, internet in the Philippines is not slow, but it is the cost of high-speed internet that is very high.
In other words, the issue here is not whether internet in the Philippines is slow or fast, the issue here is whether fast internet is affordable or not.
Although a bit off track, this issue is similar to the housing problem in the Philippines given the fact that we actually have a housing backlog. According to another friend of mine, housing is not a technology problem because there are many technologies that could provide solutions to the problem. He says instead that housing is a financing problem, because it is not affordable to most people right now, given the present pricing structure.
It may just be a matter of semantics, but if I am to argue against my friend who is a computer expert, I will tell him that contrary to what he said; internet in the Philippines is actually slow, because the majority of the people could not afford the high-speed internet.
However, even if I would agree with the saying that “you get what you pay”, I would still say that the majority of the people (as in everybody) should now have the right to high-speed internet, and not just internet, meaning slow internet that is. Although it is actually a foregone conclusion, everybody now has a right to have access to clean potable water, and not just any water, unsafe water that is.
In the case of water, many people now would still buy filtered water in bottles, even if they already have access to tap water. That is so because they are not really sure that the water on tap is safe to drink. In a manner of speaking however, we really do not get what we pay in water, not unless we could get water that is safe enough to drink, so that we do not have to buy filtered water.
Although it may not be an exact comparison, the situation is worse in the case of internet, because we actually do not get what we pay, meaning to say that the actual internet speed we are getting is much, much slower than what we are paying for. Try doing that with rice; try giving the people less rice than what they are paying for, and you would have a revolution.
It is the usual and customary practice of telecom companies to formal and legal service contracts with their commercial and industrial customers, binding them to definite commitments and obligations.
These contracts are usually done in the form of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Defined in the SLAs are the Committed Information Rates (CIRs) and the Committed Data Rates (CDRs).
CIR is the bandwidth for a virtual circuit guaranteed by a provider to work under normal conditions. CDR is the data transfer rate that the provider guarantees will carry. It is also the payload portion of the CIR. It is usually part of SLAs to have a committed accuracy rate, or a committed uptime rate, for example 99.999%. Needless to say, there are penalties if the commitments are not met, based on the value of the productive time lost. In the case of prepaid accounts, it may be difficult for the providers to have SLAs, CIRs and CDRs.
Difficult as it is, ways could be found to protect the rights of consumers to the quality that they deserve, or to actually get what they pay for. Perhaps this is something that the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) could work on, in cooperation with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
In the case of postpaid accounts however, there is no reason why the government should not be strict in implementing SLA, CIR and CDR rules. While it is at it, the government should also look at the pricing of bandwidth, which is obviously overpriced, and which is precisely the reason why the cost of high-speed internet is also high./PN
