Category: Philippine Internet

Headlines We Wish to See in 2015

Louie Diangson Leave a comment

Lazada Philippines

2015 is just around the corner and I’m sure that you are also hoping or wishing that the new year would bring better things compared to 2014. And for us at YugaTech, we are also looking forward to bringing you better news. So before we say goodbye to 2014, here are examples of headlines we wish to see in 2015.

Philippine Internet: One of the fastest in Asia – a lot has been said about the status of the Internet in the Philippines. We all know it is one of the slowest and most expensive among Asian countries. A lot of proposals were put in place this year like IP peering, law amendment, Senate bills, and increased budget allocation for the NTC. We’re hoping that the efforts exerted in 2014 will finally bear fruits in 2015.

Google Fiber to arrive in the Philippines – This may not happen next year but since the article is technically a wishlist, we can include Google’s Fiber Internet service which offers speeds of up to 1000 Mbps. Just imagine the things you can do with that kind of speed.

MRT to get new trains, upgraded systems – The aging MRT has been the talk of the town this year due to accidents, commuter inconveniences, and technical problems. Our lawmakers and corresponding government agencies are already aware of the problem and know that the mass transit system along EDSA needs a complete overhaul and upgrade. We just hope that the process goes quickly and efficiently so we can enjoy it next year.

Public transportation in the Philippines now safer, cleaner – It’s not just the MRT or LRT that needs improvement. Our public transportation needs a complete transformation as well. It is alarming to see the number of accidents and crimes that involves jeepneys, buses and taxis in 2014. Companies like Uber which provide better services compared to ordinary taxis are being restricted in the country. One of our wishes for 2015 is that our public transportation to drastically improve. We want to see more eco-friendly vehicles like the e-jeep and e-trike on the road as well.

SLEX to Baguio in 3 hours – If you Google “SLEX to Baguio”, the search result would show a travel time of 3 hours and 22 minutes, that is “without traffic”. Since the term “without traffic” is almost not applicable in all major roads in the country (like EDSA), the actual travel time could be significantly longer. This was experienced by Senate President Franklin Drilon who spent more than 11 hours on the road traveling from San Juan to Baguio. Drilon blamed the inefficient system of collecting toll fees in expressways and calls for a probe. Hopefully it works, so we can go to Baguio without spending the whole day on the road.

Freedom of Information bill passed into law – The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act aims to make the government transparent by mandating the disclosure of information pertaining to official acts, transactions, or decisions, as well as government research data used as a basis for policy development, regardless of its physical form or format. If passed into law, every Filipino will have the right to request such information from all government agencies, thus allowing them to participate and contribute in good governance. As of March 2014, the Senate passed the FOI bill on third and final reading. Hopefully the FOI Act finally becomes a law in 2015.

Project Ara officially launched – We’ve been reporting about the module-based smartphone that Google has been working on for quite a while now. A lot of people, including ourselves, have been looking forward to it not just because of its unique interchangeable parts that open up different possibilities, but also because building your own phone could generally be more affordable than current flagship models in the market. Finally seeing it available on store shelves would be something to look forward to.

Devices on Google Play now available in the Philippines – Not all of Google’s services are available here in the Philippines and one of them is Devices on Google Play which allows customers to purchase Google Nexus mobile devices, Chromebooks, other Google-branded hardware, and accessories. You can buy some of them through our local online sellers but you won’t be able to enjoy Google’s support and warranty for these devices. If Google can start selling their devices in the country, that would be great.

Solar-powered homes becoming more common in the Philippines – We reported in November about SM North EDSA being the largest solar-powered mall in the country. Now imagine if every household can also have access to solar-powered systems. We can now lower our electricity bills as well as contribute to the environment by utilizing clean and renewable energy. Solar-powered systems don’t come cheap though but since Pag-IBIG now offers loans for purchase of solar panels, the idea isn’t too far-fetched.

Filipino students can now study at home using the Internet – In June, we wrote about House Bill 4161 that aims to institutionalize the open electronic learning school system that allows students to receive the educational services they need without having to go to their classes regularly. Once the Bill is enacted into law, hopefully in 2015, the new system will allow students to study on their own without having to regularly attend class in conventional classrooms. Students can use the Internet and other multimedia technologies as a learning alternative.

How about you guys, what headlines do you wish to see in 2015? Share your thoughts in the comments field below.

Kevin Francisco contributed to this post.

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OpenSignal compares Globe and Smart’s LTE speed

Kevin Bruce Francisco Leave a comment

OpenSignal, a company specializing in wireless coverage mapping, released a report that focuses on Philippine Internet – particularly our LTE speed. They compared two of our telecoms (Globe and Smart) to show where they stand in terms of download speed, upload speed, and latency.

LTE download and upload speed

LTE download and upload speed

Based on the report, Globe’s download speed is a little bit faster than Smart’s at an average speed of 6.1Mbps against 5.9Mbps. In terms of uploading, Smart overtakes Globe by a mere .2Mbps at 7.2Mbps and 7Mbps, respectively. As for LTE latency or as OpenSignal says is “the time it takes for the server to acknowledge the request from the device,” Globe trumps Smart with 93.3ms against 185.4ms.

LTE latency (lower is better)

Latency plays a big part in streaming video and VOIP for video chatting and the like. It greatly affects how we, subscribers, feel about the speed of our carrier as a whole (lower is better).

The report however recognizes Smart’s efforts in making significant improvements over the past 3 months in both download and upload speed.

Although this may be the case, we’re still lagging behind other countries in LTE and even in overall Internet speed (2.5Mbps against South Korea’s upcoming 10Gbps)  as we’ve previously reported.

Click through for OpenSignal’s full report.

{OpenSignal}

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PH internet still ASEAN’s slowest; are we making progress?

Bob Freking Leave a comment

Lazada Philippines

It has been around five months already since we reported Philippine internet speeds being the slowest in ASEAN. Since then, the issue has caught a lot of attention causing senate hearings & probing.Upon checking into Ookla’s Net Index, we can see that not much has changed.

filipino oligarchy internet

Net Index’s data, analyzed between August 27 & September 25 this year, reports that the Philippines has an average download speed of 3.5 mbps and an upload speed of 1.4 mbps as of writing – for broadband users. One thing to note though is that the average mobile internet speed is slightly higher at 3.6 & 1.7 mbps respectively – which is understandable given the trends of mobile internet.

As we’ve said, there have been calls to probing and senate hearings, and so far, we’ve gotten a lot of statements on the issue. A lot of pressure is put on PLDT for not allowing IP peering, so for one case, PLDT blames abusive users for slow internet speeds and for another case, blames Filipinos’ preference for websites in English language. A lot of discussion is still going on between the government & the telcos, most of it concerning IP peering, misleading advertisements and the like. On the other hand, the NTC has already proposed a higher budget for faster internet.

So far, it looks like one of the best solutions being pushed right now is IP peering, but we still have no idea if it will all lead to this. There’s a good discussion about this on Reddit, but we have also discussed the causes and possible solutions in the past to expensive but slow Philippine internet in the following articles below:

Right now, all we have to do is to keep the fire burning. We shouldn’t let this issue just die down and be forgotten. The system needs to either allow foreign investments by abolishing 60/40, be more strict with torrent downloads, inspire competition and have companies & the government invest on infrastructure – or a combination of all.

However, all of this won’t happen if we don’t push for progress. Do you think we’ll make progress?

{Net Index}

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Is 5G technology really here?

Kevin Bruce Francisco Leave a comment

Smart Communications recently announced its new LTE-A ‘5G’ service which got a lot of people talking. Instead of it being good news, many took it in a negative way saying that it’s all just a marketing hype. But what exactly is 5G? Is it really here?

Smart5G

5G describes the upcoming generation of wireless networking. It is not a set of standard specifications that determine if the technology qualifies to be called 5G or not. As of now it is just used to describe the next-gen connectivity since there’s still no solid definition or formal agreement between companies of what it really is. Though this may be the case, 5G is expected to be 100 times faster and 1,000 times the capacity of LTE, faster streaming, and most importantly has the capability to cover wider range.

It is also important to note that experts see this technology being operational on 2020 at the earliest. This is due to the amount of time and money still needed to successfully finish the project.

One of the few handsets today with support for LTE-A is the Singapore-launched Samsung Galaxy S5 4G+ and there are no news of its local availability yet. Because of this, a lot of Filipinos still can’t make use of this new technology here in the country. The announcement of this service in the Philippines also reached overseas and attracted attention from an international site calling it a “bogus 5G technology.”

In Smart’s defense, one of the entries on their website’s FAQs section asks this:

“I heard that LTE-A is not 5G – is this true?”

To which Smart answers:

“LTE-Advanced is the next stage of development of LTE that offers significantly higher data speeds. It has been referred to, in some markets like the United States, as 5G. This means faster Internet downloading and video streaming, among other capabilities.”

What we’re seeing here is that the term 5G, as of now, still has a wide scope of definition making it easy to use loosely.

For us, having LTE-A or “5G” is still good news. The thing is, if there will still be Fair Usage Policy (and we’re pretty sure data capping will still be implemented) for its subscribers, having faster-than-average connection won’t do much good as it cannot be maximized – it’s just like being handed a key to a nice house that you can only live in for once a month.

Besides, many subscribers have yet to even taste the actual speed of LTE/4G in the country because of the limited coverage so the talk for 5G could only add salt to injury.

What do you think of Smart’s 5G technology? We put up a poll below just in case you want to share your thoughts on the subject. Do you believe Smart’s claim about their 5G connectivity?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
{Sources: 1, 2}

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Call to Action: How we can push for faster PH internet

Bob Freking Leave a comment

The Philippines was reported to hold the title of having the slowest internet in the ASEAN, and a lot of people are not happy about it. Following Sen. Bam Aquino’s call for investigating why we have slow and expensive internet in the PH, we thought of things that we can possibly have to improve the services that we have here in the Philippines.

filipino oligarchy internet

Policies are the first things that we should look into as the internet utility here is a huge business; tinkering with the policies that govern us will also tinker with how things work. To push innovation and progress when it comes to internet services, or for any other business even, the market needs more competition — and in our case, we only have a few players — an internet oligopoly.

To get a better understanding of why our policies are not working in the internet consumers’ favor and why Filipinos pay more for slower internet, you can check out our article here dedicated for that. A video by Michael Jacob that can be seen above also questions the same query, and we have all arrived on the same answer: we have no choice but to pay for internet service despite the steep prices because there really is no other ISP that we can choose from.

One way is that we abolish the 60/40 foreign ownership rule so that we can attract more investors to create more competition in the market. This will allow creations of new and independent networks, plans and promos for us consumers. Another thing is that we can have the government open publicly funded cable systems and international gateways effectively adding more neutral pipes. The government, via the NTC, should also demand local peering between ISPs.

If we want to go a bit further, we can have illegal torrents fully blocked to help decongest the network. This has proven to be effective in countries such as Japan. We’ve also noticed that this has been partially implemented by some local telcos (we are getting a lot of reports that mobile Supersurf LTE plans by Globe has throttled torrents down to 10Kbps while maintaining faster speeds for direct downloads and streaming).

For other little things, we can push to have service trials before signing into contracts to grant us actual experience before committing to a lock-in period (something similar Sky Broadband’s 15-day trial). Lock-in periods of 12 and 24 months can also be reduced to 3 months or 6 months so that subscribers can easily switch to another provider if they are not satisfied with the speed and service.

Truth in advertising. This is where a lot of subscribers have been misled. We know that the “up to Mbps” promise is technically accurate (no ISP can guarantee minimum speed unless you’re on a very expensive dedicated or leased line) but that also provides the service providers an excuse. Perhaps we can set the average minimum speed guarantee to be around 60% of the promised speed. Otherwise, subscribers will be entitled to a full/partial rebate.

And lastly, the most obvious way to improve the average speed of internet is when service providers invest more in infrastructure, perhaps cutting their profit margins for the next couple of years to make way for innovation in the long run.

For some people, these suggestions may look like a far shot, but hey, all changes and things started off as ideas, and all that ideas need is a little fire to start with, and eventually it gains enough traction for action.

If you have any more ideas on how we can push for faster internet in the Philippines, feel free to let everyone know in the comment section down below. Start the conversation, sign a petition, and if we do it loud enough, they might hear.

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