DICT: Broadband project cost may be less than P20B
THE Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) may spend only a fraction of the P77 billion it originally forecast on the government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP), its chief said.
According to Acting Information Secretary Elisio Rio Jr., his department estimated it would spend roughly less than P20 billion after it recently signed a tripartite agreement with the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) and the National Transmission Corp. (TransCo) for the use of dark fiber optic cables.
Before the deal, the NBP’s total cost was between P20 billion and P30 billion.
The project—which needs to have international gateway facilities (IGFs), backbone, and middle and last miles to work—has secured the first two through Facebook’s planned construction of the Luzon Bypass Infrastructure to boost internet speeds to as fast as 2 terabits per second, and the tripartite deal, Rio said.
The middle mile can now be given to telecommunications companies (telcos), which “will be the one to link the backbone to point of presence in the provinces,” he added.
“From the point of presence, doon kukunin ng small players ‘yung last mile nila papunta sa subscribers (that is where small players would take their last mile toward their subscribers),” the DICT head said.
The department is now ramping up the deployment of access points, as these will be the plan’s terminal points, he added.
Earlier this month, Rio said the DICT-NGCP-TransCo agreement would help bring the government’s plan of providing internet connectivity to rural areas, about 40 percent of which remain underserved or unserved by PLDT Inc. and Globe Telecom.
The NBP, he added, aims to put up 200,000 Wi-Fi access points throughout the country by the end of 2022.
The department launched the NBP last June with the goal of accelerating the deployment of fiber optic cables and wireless technologies to improve internet speeds and costs.
According to the Ookla Speedtest Global Index for May 2018, the Philippines’ average fixed broadband speed was 17.7 megabits per second (Mbps) for downloads and 15.86 Mbps for uploads
The global average for fixed broadband is 45.48 Mbps for downloads and 22 Mbps for uploads, it said.
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