Telcos: Government support vital to sector growth

CEBU, Philippines - Private telecom companies can only do so much to improve the country’s connectivity infrastructure, the solution to connecting the entire country can only be achieved if the government will allocate funds to support the industry.

"As an industry, we are telling the government to be an enabler (in technology growth)," said Globe Telecoms vice president for corporate communications communications Yoly Crisanto in an interview.

The challenge now for most telecom companies is that keeping up with fast-paced movement of technology, which requires huge investments, is largely shouldered by the private sector.

As a business, Crisanto said telecom companies, like Globe cannot put its money to under-developed territories, or missionary sites while business is still not feasible.

"We are asking the government to build telecommunications infrastructure to missionary sites," she said expressing hopes that this appeal can be incorporated in the National Broadband Network program of the government.

As of now, the government had no investment yet in enabling the country to have a world-class infrastructure to support the evolution of technology.

Infrastructure for the information super-highway, she said is not only the responsibility of the private sector players, but the government also has to answer the public's demand for affordable, high-speed connectivity.

 Although telecom players are willing to invest in blanketing the entire country with connectivity, their effort is also hampered by the bureaucratic red tape happening in the lower government levels or the local government units.

 Crisanto reiterated the problem of obtaining permit in order to set up just a single cell-site on an area. At least 25 permits, including approval from home owners, and go signal from Department of Health (DOH), should be completed before an actual cell-site is built. This usually takes months to a year before the documentary hurdles are complete.

  Unless the government will put down its hand on the problem, it will take a while for the telecom firms to catch up with the fast evolving technology path, said Globe Telecom chief commercial officer Albert Larrazabal.

  Larrazabal said the problem of telecom players now is not about the amount of capex they have to allocate to overhaul the current network, but the government's inability to speed up the process of issuing permits and other necessary documents that lengthens the agony of internet users who are constantly complaining of slow connection.

Larrazabal affirmed that the long process a telecom firm has to go through in order to set up one cell site.

He said Globe Telecom is doing its best to improve the quality of data speed and bandwidth in the country on the ground that this is also the company's interest to provide good and quality service. But unless, the concerned agencies in the national to local government units will cooperate to loosen the requirements and series of needed permits, it will take time for the telecom industry to achieve ideal speed in Internet service. (FREEMAN)