Tawi-Tawi goes for satellite phones

BONGAO, Tawi-Tawi – Long isolated by distance and poor communications, this southernmost province has scored a first of sorts in governance.

At the initiative of the provincial government, all of the 203 barangays in its 10 municipalities are now linked to each other and the world via satellite telephones.

"I wanted to put a phone in each barangay. It’s only now that it’s been possible to achieve this," said Tawi-Tawi Gov. Rashidin Matba.

Tawi-Tawi’s accomplishment has to be reckoned against the fact that about 40 percent of the country’s over 40,000 barangays still have no phones.

Repeated attempts to set up a government rural telephony program proved to be costly failures. Despite the expansion of private telecom networks, many communities still remain beyond the reach of land-based wired and wireless communications networks.

Satellite telephony has long offered the promise of connecting remote regions. But it had been too expensive or cumbersome to be a viable option for rural communities. That has changed though.

The satellite phones that Matba purchased from Smart Communications Inc. cost less than P5,000 each. As a result, for the price of a sedan, the governor was able to buy 200 Smart Link satellite phones – one each for the barangays and the rest for local government agencies.

The cost of using satellite phones has also dropped: P13 per minute for "peak" hours and P8 for "off-peak" hours. IDD calls cost only 35 US cents per minute for 107 frequently called countries.

"We’ve reduced prices and rates so that satellite service will be within the reach of more people," said Ma. Cristina Mariano, who heads Smart’s public access department.

Matba said the affordable rates matter a lot because his constituents call relatives and friends in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries, aside from those in other parts of the country.

"The experience of Tawi-Tawi underscores the fact that it is now possible for each and every barangay – even in the most inaccessible parts of the country – to be connected by phone in a very cost-effective way," said Napoleon Nazareno, Smart president and CEO.

"By combining our extensive GSM coverage with satellite telephony using the ACeS system, we can cover every square foot of Philippine territory – on land and sea," he added.

This combination works well for a province like Tawi-Tawi, which derived its name from the Malay word "juai" which means "far."

Though the provincial capital of Bongao has both wired and wireless telecom services, the other nine municipalities are simply beyond the reach of conventional land-based networks.

The province is divided into three island groups, composed of over 300 islands and islets.

One island municipality, Simunul, is just 30 kilometers from Sabah, Malaysia. The other municipalities – Languyan, Mapu (Cagayan de Tawi-Tawi), Panglima, Sugala (Balimbing), Sapa-Sapa, Sitangkai, South Ubian, Tandubas and Turtle – are equally remote and scattered like broken strings of pearls.

Smart Link phones are designed to work in such conditions. A standard set consists of a main terminal that contains the phone mechanism and the SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) card, an all-weather dome antenna that looks like a squashed pomelo, a few feet of coaxial cable, and an ordinary landline handset.

The phones can be installed in minutes and maintained virtually anywhere. In areas that do not have 24-hour electricity, a car battery may be used as the power source for the satellite phone. Smart also has a tie-up with a supplier that can provide a solar power system to support the phones.

The phones can also be placed on moving vehicles. Matba’s speedboat, for example, sports a Smart Link unit.

The SIM card feature allows individuals to make calls on Smart Link phones using their personal telephone numbers. A user can purchase his own SIM card that comes with its own number. He can then easily insert his SIM card when making a call and remove it afterwards.

That’s what Matba does. "I can call anytime, anywhere in Tawi-Tawi. Whichever island I am on, I only use one number," he said.

The Smart Link service utilizes the ACeS satellite system, which has a footprint covering a 13-million-square-mile area that stretches from Pakistan to Papua New Guinea.