Still slowly creeping up

Originally, this week’s subject of our Kapihan sa Manila Bay via Zoom Webinar is all about the ongoing campaigns of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) against the spread of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and status of the anti-drugs war. This is because DILG Secretary Eduardo Año is the co-chairman of the National Task Force (NTF) implementing the national action plan against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The DILG Secretary is also one of the members of the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging and Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) in charge of the COVID-19 pandemic measures of the country. However, Año has previously set meetings and asked one of his DILG deputies, Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya, who also serves as the official spokesman for the agency to sub for him. So I invited erstwhile DILG Undersecretary and now chairman of the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Catalino Cuy to join us in our virtual conversations in our weekly Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday.

On the anti-drug front, the DDB chairman admitted the international trafficking of illegal drugs remains the biggest challenge in our country despite the ongoing pandemic. Even before the COVID pandemic, Cuy noted, big-time drug traffickers have also been largely using online transactions in continuing their shabu and other narcotic contrabands that still find their way to the Philippines. “But they have been affected and laid low by the COVID,” Cuy quipped.

Cuy reassured though the public all government law enforcement agencies led by the Philippine Drugs Enforcement Agency (PDEA) have cyber expertise and equipment that have effectively keep up with these local and international drug traffickers even if they go online with their illegal transactions.

For his part, Malaya gave us update report from the DILG in implementing the presidential directives to improve services of telecommunications companies (telcos) in the Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte first issued these directives when he delivered his penultimate state of the nation address (SONA).

The Chief Executive issued an “or else” warning in July telcos to improve their services by December this year.

The President justified this deadline with a wisecrack wishing his mobile phone connection to get through Bethlehem by that time. This was obviously in oblique reference to Christmas season when families make long distance calls to their loved ones, especially overseas Filipino workers abroad separated from their homes. It was more an expression of his exasperation over the continuing poor connectivity services of the existing duopoly of giant telcos, Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. A third telco called DITO Telecommunity Corp., or DITO for short, is owned by Davao City businessman Dennis Uy in partnership with China Telecom.

In reply to the presidential pique, telcos pointed to red tape in the bureaucracy in both national and local government units (LGUs) that allegedly hamper their operations and ultimately services to millions of their customers. Among other things, telcos principally griped over delay in permits and licenses boggling down the construction of their cell towers all around the country.

Lack of telco towers in the Philippines is being blamed for the slow internet speed and online accessibility problems.

Given the necessities of contact-less transactions, no face-to-face classes, and physical distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection, Malaya underscored the importance of the President’s directives to further improve connectivity services of the telcos.

And such situation could not be tolerated by the government amid the COVID-19 pandemic that gave rise to much use of internet and greater demand for online connectivity. The use of online platform is one of the social distancing measures to keep people at home and stem off spread of this deadly flu-like disease that can be transmitted by close personal physical contact.

In subsequent IATF meeting after his SONA, the President instructed the DILG Secretary to look into and hold local executives responsible for the much complained red tape at the level of LGUs. Hence, Malaya recalled the President tasked the DILG, the Department of Information and Communications (DICT), the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA), along with other concerned government agencies to address these concerns of the telcos. On the part of the DILG, it is the agency that supervises all LGUs from 18 regions, 78 provinces to thousands of cities/municipalities down to more than 42,000 barangays all over the country.

Four months after, Malaya informed us during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay virtual news forum there are now a total of 22,405 additional cell towers as a result of faster approval by various LGUs for the construction of these facilities since President Duterte issued his marching order to cut excessive and arbitrary processes for telco applications on permits and licenses. By March at the latest, Malaya cited, the third telco finally coming on stream would certainly help to meet the greater demand and supply of the country’s telco sector, Malaya pointed out.

In his own report to Malacanang virtual presser last Tuesday, National Telecommunications Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba disclosed third party audit and tests done by Ookla speed test showed the Philippines’ fixed downloading speed has posted a 262.7-percent increase from 7.91 megabits per second (mbps) in 2016 to 28.69 mbps as of November, 2020. Mobile downloading speed, on the other hand, Cordoba announced has recorded a 148.52-percent spike from 7.44 mbps in 2016 to 18.49 mbps last month. At the start of the year, fixed download speed stood at 25.91 mpbs and mobile download speed was at 16.15 mbps, he added.

However, the country’s fixed broadband speed is still a far cry from the rest of the world as it ranked 32nd out of 50 countries in Asia, while its mobile broadband speed is at 34th in the region. Like the internet speed, the Philippine ranking is also slowly creeping up.