Both telcos were slow to react

One of the main reasons why mobile internet is so slow in the country is the lack of cell towers, especially in the metro. There’s more or less 20,000 cell towers spread out in the Philippines to serve millions and millions of people. Cell towers in our country are overloaded, and are woefully inadequate to serve everyone efficiently. Compared to Vietnam, which has around 70,000 towers to serve their population, our 20,000 towers are downright pathetic.

So how did this come to pass? Well, problems with red tape is one of the biggest problems in putting up a new cell site, but the biggest issue that Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., the current OIC of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) was the lack of foresight of both PLDT and Globe throughout the years. See, back in the early 2000’s, the most lucrative business for telcos was SMS. It was a great time for both telcos, as billions of text messages were being sent a day, and the number of cell towers back then (20,000 as he claims) were more than enough to handle the SMS traffic. Being a high-value, low-maintenance kind of gig, both telcos did not see a reason to install more towers.

As mobile data exploded, both telcos were caught off guard. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr. estimates that we need at least 67,000 towers to improve our mobile data access, and we’re currently 47,000 short.

The DICT has solutions though. It involves putting in thousands of WiFi access points in public places, construction of common towers to be leased to telcos, signing of the long awaited EO for faster LGU and NGA response in terms of permits needed for cell towers as well as encouraging content and apps that will make people work and study at home. You can check out the full list below:

With the Free Wifi Law, the government will put up tens of thousands of Wifi Access Points (APs) in public places to help decongest cellsites. When hundreds of APs were installed along the MRT3 tracks in EDSA giving free WiFi to the public, an average of 700,000 people daily accessed these which greatly decongested the cellsites covering EDSA.

The government will construct common towers to be leased to telcos, which when added to the telco towers built or to be built will attain the needed 67K at the earliest possible time.

An EO is awaiting signature of the President to lessen the LGUs and NGAs permits to built towers.

Government to encourage applications and content that will make people subscribe to high speed internet to their homes, such as being able to work and study at homes. The savings in time and money from not suffering the traffic in Metro Manila even for once or twice a week, would be more than enough to pay for the subscription to high-speed internet. We will soon have a Telecommuting Law to address this.

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