THE government’s plan to encourage the entry of four to six foreign internet service providers to break the country’s telecommunications duopoly is as welcome as it is overdue.
For far too long, Filipino consumers have had the short end of the stick compared to their Asian counterparts, paying more for slower internet access—a clear result of the faux competition that exists between the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT)-Smart and Globe Telecom.
This sad state of affairs is borne out, not just by empirical evidence, but also by the latest “State of the Internet” report by the cloud services provider Akamai Technologies.
The fourth quarter 2016 edition of the report that was released in March shows that the Philippines had the lowest average internet connection speed among all Asia-Pacific countries surveyed, at 4.5 (Mbps) megabits per second.
This dismal average connection speed put us below India (5.6 Mbps), China (6.3 Mbps), Indonesia (6.7 Mbps), Sri Lanka (7.3 Mbps), Malaysia (8.2 Mbps), and Vietnam (8.3 Mbps).
In contrast, South Korea had the fastest average internet speed both in the region and in the world, with an enviable 26.1 Mbps, while Hong Kong had 21.9 Mbps.
Among the 15 Asian countries surveyed, eight already had connection speeds that exceed 10 Mbps. To gain entry into this group, we need to break the stranglehold that PLDT-Smart and Globe have, not only on the market, but on regulatory authorities.
Just last year, the two telecommunications giants both took the courts to stop San Miguel and its joint venture partner Telstra of Australia from entering the market and providing some real competition. Then, when Telstra and San Miguel backed out, the two giants divvied up the key 700-megahertz spectrum that had been assigned to San Miguel. The spectrum is significant because the 700-megahertz band is best at penetrating buildings and traveling long distances—a key to faster connection speeds. But more than a year after they did this—with the promise of service improvements—neither PLDT nor Globe have delivered the goods.
It is no wonder that the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) has stepped in to review the allocation of the 700-MHz spectrum, and the anti-competitive environment that PLDT and Globe foster.
President Rodrigo Duterte understands this.
“The only way to improve your service is to give them competitors,” he said last week, noting that if there are only two players, they can easily come to an arrangement with each other to the detriment of the consuming public.
“I need about 4, 5, o 6. They’ll enter, we’ll just choose,” he added.
These words bode well for long-suffering internet users—but only if the government lives up to them and fights off all efforts to sabotage real competition.