600 municipalities to have free Internet next year

MANILA, Philippines - About 600 fourth to sixth class municipalities all over the country will have free wireless fidelity (WiFi) Internet hotspots next year.

The Department of Science and Technology (DOST)’s Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) will implement nationwide the agency’s Television White Space (TVWS) Internet technology project.

DOST said the project seeks to provide local government unit offices with Internet connectivity and allow them to give WiFi Internet hubs in town plazas where people can have free access.

At the sidelines of the International Information Technology-Business Process Management (IT-BPM) summit at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel yesterday, Science Secretary Mario Montejo told reporters that the nationwide rollout of the TVWS program has P300 million in funding from the 2015 appropriation for the DOST-ICTO.

He said the national rollout of the TVWS project is expected to increase the Philippines’ Internet penetration dramatically since the project will provide far-flung areas with fast and free WiFi Internet connectivity.

For this reason, the DOST is encouraging the IT-BPM sector to expand into areas outside Metro Manila and tap the huge population of possible recruits in the countryside.

Recently, the DOST started a program promoting rural impact sourcing, a subsector of the IT-BPM industry where individuals can offer freelance minor business process outsourcing jobs to individuals and companies abroad.

DOST Undersecretary Louis Napoleon Casambre said the TVWS technology is emerging as the best solution in providing Internet connectivity to the Philippine archipelago as thousands of mountain and island communities are unserved or underserved by private telecommunication companies.

In an earlier interview, DOST Assistant Secretary and ICTO deputy executive director Bettina Quimson also noted that the TVWS technology is way cheaper than the Arroyo administration’s controversial and scrapped national broadband network project, which was pegged at a cost of $329 million.

The DOST-ICTO and the Filipino-Singaporean firm Nityo Infotech are now undertaking a pilot test of the TVWS technology, which taps the unused TV broadcast frequencies to provide broadband Internet connectivity to target areas.

The pilot areas for the program are Palo and Tacloban City in Leyte and Tubigon in Bohol, which were hit hard by calamities last year.