SETTLED WITH your “fast and reliable” internet plan lately? Think again.
Our country ranked 12th among Asia’s 48 countries based on its active social media penetration (current active social media accounts in online websites) studied by Statistica last month. But is average internet speed of 3.6 megabytes per second (Mbps) really the “fastest” our internet service providers could offer us?
ASEAN’s slowest
Last April, ASEAN DNA released their analyzed internet speed data in a global scale and further broken it down to the ASEAN level.
Now let’s get down to business. In their study, they recorded that the average internet speed in the 10 ASEAN regions composed of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam is 12.4 Mbps – about three times faster than the 3 Mbps “fast and reliable” internet plan offered to us Filipinos by our internet service providers, monitored by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
There are only three ASEAN countries that exceed the 10 Mbps mark: Singapore, which offers a massive 61 Mbps, followed by Thailand with 17.7 Mbps average, and Vietnam with 13.1 Mbps.
Our country ranks fifth among the ten ASEAN countries in terms of economy. We were able to surpass Vietnam, Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia, and Laos with respect to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) value, but we still rank last and lagged below Laos in terms of technological advancement.
Inadequate
According to an article from the Manila Bulletin last April, Senator Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV initiated a probe seeking for answers on why our country suffers from expensive yet slow internet until now.
“We have to find ways to improve the system and fast, especially with the ASEAN Economic Integration happening a year from now,” he stated in the article.
Indeed. How could we keep up with our neighboring countries if one of our means of connection with them, already holds us back from our nation’s true potential?
Sen. Aquino added that a typical Filipino internet plan customer spends about P1,000 per month for an internet connection with speed up to three Mbps while some telecommunication companies offer up to peak speed of five Mbps for double the price.
Singtel, Singapore’s largest telecommunications company offers a 15 Mbps plan for just 37 Singaporean dollars (about P1,300) per month which dwindles down to more or less P87 per Mbps. Thailand who ranks second in the fastes ASEAN internet service providers offers 12 Mbps for 800 Baht (approximately P1,100) a month which equates to about P92 per Mbps.
P87 and P92 per Mbps in one month? Well, welcome to the Philippines whose internet service providers offer a whooping P333 per Mbps in a month. It is definitely too much for a country that ranks 16th in most active internet users in the world with an average of 39.5 million internet users (37.6 percent of the total population), yet places 155th out of 180 countries for our Internet speed.
Losses
For a long time now, I really wanted to know how much money one Filipino internet user could possibly lose in a day due to slow internet. Thanks to Rise.ph, I now know how. According to the data I obtained, each of us lose about 1.7 hours of our average productive time daily due to slow internet (17.5 Mbps is the current global internet speed average and I used 3.6 Mbps as the Philippine’s current average speed). If the average income of a person in a household is P17.74 per hour (according to census.gov.ph), each internet user will lose about P30.16 per day (1.7 hours multiplied by P17.74). That’s about P905 per month or P11,000 per year.
Last September 16, Sen. Bam Aquino spearheaded a senate hearing about amending Republic Act 7925 which will declare internet access as a basic service instead of a value-added one which might answer the country’s demand for faster and more reliable internet speeds. NTC Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba also called on Congress to pass a bill declaring internet access as a basic service.In the same hearing, Department of Trade and Industry Undersecretary Victorio Dimagiba pointed out that internet service providers only mention their maximum internet speed in advertisements but don’t talk about the minimum speeds that internet users usually experience. This is why, they want the advertising telecommunication companies to advertise the assured internet speed they can give to their consumers and not just the “up to” speeds.
The Philippines is currently called one of the “Economic Tigers” in Southeast Asia as we step up the economic ladder. But with this, shouldn’t we invest and maximize our potential in order to achieve our nation’s dreams and goals? How can telecommunication companies in our country limit their services and put the burden of slow and sometimes unreliable internet connections to their consumers? We are slowly achieving our goals as a nation, but when one of our resources is not maximized, it will always be a roadblock that will always anchor us to the bottom.
This is a generation where technology is not just a privilege, but a necessity. From helping people transact with each other may it be for personal or business purposes, finding information needed for theses and the likes, to healthcare and military uses, the internet truly is a need in a world where people could reach places and get news with just a click of our fingertips.
