Duterte admin to invest on broadband infrastructure

By Philippines News Agency

MANILA — The Duterte administration will invest on broadband infrastructure in the Philippines, National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba said on Tuesday.

“This is the first time that our administration will do this kind of thing. We’ll have a broadband owned and put up by the government,” he told the Philippines News Agency (PNA).

Credit: pixabay / MANILA BULLETIN

Cordoba said the plans will be made by the first or second quarter of 2017, then implementation will immediately follow.

The NTC Commissioner pointed out that other countries are putting in funds for broadband infrastructure, and the Duterte administration recognizes this need in order to address issues on connectivity.

Also, he said that with the growing data traffic, and the growing number of internet users, there is really a need to invest on such infrastructure.

How will it affect the telecommunications providers in the country?

“If for instance, the government would put up cell sites, there’s an option to have these leased by telco operators,” Cordoba said.

He continued that the advantage of it is that there would be less operating expense on the telco operators’ side, since they will not be putting up their own sites in some areas.

Meanwhile, to know about the concerns of industry players and to gather suggestions on how to improve the internet connectivity, an ICT summit was organized by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) on Tuesday.

Suggestions, drafted resolutions from this summit will be presented to President Rodrigo Duterte.

Tags: broadband, Duterte, Duterte admin to invest on broadband infrastructure, infrastructure, Internet, Manila Bulletin, NTC, telecommunications