Telcos, ISPs, rise (and fail) to the occasion

MANILA, Philippines — Telecommunications companies and internet service providers (ISPs) have risen to the occasion – but also failed at times – as their services became a lifeline and necessity to most Filipinos who were told to stay at home this 2020.

With the COVID-19 pandemic altering people’s daily lives, all eyes were on the telcos and ISPs to deliver sufficient and stable networks to meet the growing demands of people working from home, students who were prevented from attending physical classes, and even those who just needed to be entertained inside their houses.

But were they able to meet these needs, let alone the not-so-high expectations from the public?

For former Department of Information and Communications Technology undersecretary Eliseo Rio, telcos deserve a passing mark, considering what they had to go through this year.

“Well, the telco industry was really hit by the pandemic, when because of the lockdowns, the longest in the world, almost all of us accessed the internet as our means to try to continue what we did in normal times,” Rio told The STAR.

“Never in our history were our telecommunication infrastructure subjected to this kind of demand. Yet, we managed somehow because our telcos were able to improve their services since 2016, when their poor performance even became an election issue, and the promise of President Duterte then as a candidate to improve telco services won him substantial votes,” he said.

Rio said had this pandemic occurred two years ago, the country’s telco network would have crashed with the kind of demand it faces now.

“Two years ago, we could not have communicated in Zoom or watched Netflix that way we are doing now,” he said.

Presidential adviser for telecommunications RJ Jacinto also recognizes the improvements which the local telco players have managed to pull off this year.

“There is some improvement and the dominant telcos are trying to do their best after President Duterte’s warning,” Jacinto told The STAR.

“But the country is still lagging behind,” he said.

Jacinto said the government has delivered by reducing the red tape in building towers. However, he said getting the permits is only the start.

“We need to finish from 5,000 to 10,000 common towers a year. Catching up with the world requires cooperation of everyone,” said Jacinto, noting that only more towers and better equipped cell sites will bring the country up to par with the world.

The country’s telecommunications regulator, for its part, is also giving the market players a good grade for ensuring stable connectivity throughout the crisis.

“It is important to note that since the onset of ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) until now, internet connectivity did not fail in the country notwithstanding the 500 percent increase in demand,” National Telecommunications Commission commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba said.

“From gaming, to video streaming, video conferencing, online banking, work from home connectivity, and commercial transactions, internet is noticeably stable throughout the country during this crisis,” he said.

Telco services have in fact improved this year amid the pandemic, with both fixed and mobile internet speeds increasing based on the Ookla Speedtest.

Fixed download speed went up to 28.69 mbps in November from 25.91 mpbs in January, while mobile download speed grew to 18.49 mbps in November from 16.15 mbps at the start of the year.

“When we had the lockdown, people stayed at home, they worked from home, and the whole family is at home and their entertainment is through the internet that is why internet speed fell in March and April. What happened is that demand went up,” Cordoba said.

“So we really needed time to recover, that is why starting in May onward it (internet speed) has gone up. There has been an upward trajectory since,” he said.

Sky Fiber, a high-speed broadband service  offered by ABS-CBN’s Sky Cable Corp., is among those which saw a significant rise in internet consumption as a result of the lockdown.

It also registered an increase in plan upgrades, as internet users sought for faster speeds.

“Due to the lockdown, the peak hours in terms of internet consumption increased from six to 10 hours or a considerable 33 percent. There was also a surge in terms of broadband plan upgrades by approximately 50 to 60 percent versus pre-lockdown,” Sky’s head for consumer broadband products Alan Supnet told The STAR.

Due to the pandemic, not only did the way data is being consumed changed, but also the volume.

“For installs alone, we saw a more than double growth of install requests, mostly coming from data plan users,” Supnet said.

Telco giant PLDT Inc. on its end recorded a significant jump in broadband installations to approximately 72,000 new connects per month in the third quarter, from an average of 40,000 each month in 2019.

These installation numbers are expected to spike to at least 100,000 homes per month, moving forward, as demand for stable and fast connectivity increases as well.

For Supnet, speeds of 10 mbps to 25 mbps would be ideal to small families of two to three members with basic internet activities such as email, social network sites, and light live-streaming.

For those with several simultaneous activities like work from home, online  schooling and moderate live streaming, he said speeds of 30 mbps to 75 mbps is advisable.

While for mid to big-sized families living in bigger homes and with multiple and moderate to heavy streaming including gaming, he said speeds of 100 mbps to 200 mbps are highly-recommended, plus perhaps the addition of a WiFi mesh to help eliminate dead zones in most parts of the home.

Most customers, however, have remained unsatisfied in the services of their telcos and ISPs amid all these reported improvements as seen by the complaints posted in various social media platforms.

These concerns were further reiterated by presidential spokesperson Harry Roque in a briefing this month, saying that while improvements made by the telcos are not being disregarded, their services are still not world-class and may be considered by many as still not acceptable.

Customers of Converge ICT, one of the fastest fiber internet service providers in the country, experienced a massive service disruption in November following issues in its data center, affecting thousands of subscribers.

Aside from the usual complaints on internet speeds, telco giants PLDT and Globe also got their extra dose of complaints with regards to their customer service this year.

“We had a problem because of the pandemic, because of the lockdown, telco people and engineers were constrained to fix lines,” NTC’s Cordoba said.

On top of that, Cordoba said a number of strong typhoons have also wreaked havoc to their networks this year.

Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu admitted that the company has encountered challenges in its call centers, as well as handling all the outages in the country due to the pandemic.

“Like any other company, we are not immune to the pandemic. As much as we want to open the call centers, they are not immune to the challenges,” Cu said.

“We are trying our best to serve but we are very challenged. It is very difficult and we have to just face that reality and continue to improve the quality of the networks,” he said.

On PLDT’s end, Smart president Alfredo Panlilio believes that there is indeed more room for improvement, which the company is continuously looking into.

“Aside from connectivity, I think it’s the processes and the customer care that we are looking at. There is a lot more to fix,” Panlilio said.

With a challenging year coming to a close, telcos vowed to do even better next year, with the aim of eventually giving their customers a truly world-class service.