A House leader on Saturday urged Malacañang to bridge the country's digital divide by fast-tracking the implementation of its National Broadband Plan to keep the country’s internet connectivity and access in pace with the massive infrastructure buildup that the Duterte administration will carry out over the next five years.
Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte noted that the government’s ambitious infrastructure program should not only involve building physical structures, but also speed its national broadband program to achieve the administration’s economic inclusion for all Filipinos.
“For the government to attain economic inclusion for all sectors, it needs to invest soon enough in expanding wireless connectivity so as not to leave behind millions of Filipinos from the information technology that now drives the global economy,” Villafuerte said.
“Filling our infrastructure backlog should be complemented by dramatic advances in digital technology access to remote, impoverished communities so that people in the countryside can take advantage of the Internet in exploring and expanding economic opportunities available to them,” he added.
Villafuerte noted that seamless, fast access to the Internet would provide Filipinos with more opportunities to increase their incomes, broaden their access to education, communications, healthcare information, and electronic commerce, to mention a few.
He said that aside from putting up a National Broadband Network as the third player to toughen competition and force PLDT/Smart Communications and Globe Telecom to improve their broadband services, the government should streamline the approval of permits secured by telcos in various levels of the bureaucracy and attract overseas investments by fast-tracking efforts to relax the 60-40 rule in the 1987 Constitution.
President Rodrigo Duterte approved last March the draft National Broadband Plan of the Department of Information and Communications Technology, whose program involves providing at least 10 Mbps connection to all households by 2020 at a much lower cost than the ones now offered by telcos like Globe Telecom, PLDT and Smart Communications at P1,299 a month.
The government’s “north-to-south” broadband plan would cost about P77.9 billion as stated in the DICT’s draft NBN blueprint.
Other than the fiber optic networks of PLDT and Globe, the DICT could tap the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines’ lines comprising about 5,000 to 10,000 fiber optic cables.
The Philippines’ Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) neighbors have already started establishing their respective NBNs, Villafuerte said.
