Notes on the NBN
Atty. Rodolfo Salalima is the head of the legal department of Globe Telecom. He was a very valuable member of the Philippine delegation, which I was privileged to head from 1989 to 2000, to the plenipotentiary conferences of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). My information is that he still is an active participant from the private sector of the Philippines at the ITU conferences.
He is a person I hold in very high regard. An extremely competent legal functionary in telecom, he is currently the president of the Philippine Chamber of Telecom Operators (PCTO). He has very kindly provided me with a copy of the initial commentary of the PCTO on the government broadband network project, which basically specifies the lack of information given to the telcos. This is indeed a stumbling block preventing the telcos from speedily and efficiently proceeding.
The commentary preliminarily states, “From the perspective of rigorous project management, the present plan requires detailed clarification in its scope and specifications.” This was the first comment that emanated from the telecom private sectors through the PCTO after their first meeting with the DOTC. It was definitely valid when the telcos stated that they can only propose a responsive integrated solution or recommend a pertinent course of action once project parameters are clearly defined.
The first meeting on what is now called the GBN (Government Broadband Network) between the DOTC and the telcos occurred on October 15. The DOTC did not provide the necessary details in order to be able to come out with the necessary TORs (Terms of Reference) essential to any infra implementation. That’s precisely the reason why, from the very beginning, when I was told that a contract had in fact been signed in China — but the documents were stolen with no copies of any kind available — I have been contending that, aside from a simple project brief, before an infra contract can be signed, the TORs have to be drafted after a preliminary study of the infra project. These parameters were also absent when the DOTC and the telcos met on Oct. 15.
Atty. Salalima very rationally states in the PCTO paper that “to base solidly even the most standard of time-and-resources modeled projects, relying primarily on an underpinning principle of intra-and-inter government connectivity would be inadequate. Implementation points on quality, service and application requirements always have to be thoroughly mapped out in order to properly dimension the corollary engagement.”
The PCTO paper ends by recommending that the ICT teams of the top five to 10 government agencies for whom connectivity shall be provided must first convene a meeting in order to flesh out an initial set of project specifications. Thus, the connectivity constraints currently faced by government can be clearly articulated.
For that matter, the answers to the following “due diligence” questions have to be provided first, according to Salalima:
• Which agencies/entities are to be connected?
• Where are these entities situated?
• How many users will be involved?
• What level of connectivity (rate, rights, and security) do they require?
• What services and/or applications shall be covered?
• Is there existing infrastructure/network architecture to integrate?
• When must implementation be completed?
I was provided with a listing of the basic clarifications that need to be addressed in order to be able to feasibly and efficiently commence the development of a genuine GBN solution. Salalima’s listing hereunder, though quite exhaustive, may not even still be complete. This is precisely the reason why I have stated in previous articles on the ZTE/NBN contract that a mere project brief — without the TORs, a pre-feasibility study, feasibility study, and preliminary engineering studies — is bound to raise not only eyebrows, it turns out, but the hue and cry of a complaining populace:
For national government offices
• List of government offices included in the program. For example, are the AFP and its flag commands included? Is the PNP included?
• Exact addresses and locations of central, regional, provincial and municipal offices to be covered by the project
• Number of VOIP lines required
• Existing number of direct lines to be replaced by VOIP lines
• Number of local lines used for calling within office premises (local intranet)
• Details of IT infrastructure or existing LAN configuration, if any, with number of user terminals or PCs and types of applications used (this information will help approximate the necessary bandwidth to deliver the required CIR to each user terminal)
• E-commerce application requirements
• Number of government-subscribed cellular phones that will be part of this program
For cities and municipalities
• Exact addresses of Kapitolyos or Governor’s offices.
• Exact addresses and locations of municipal halls. The NCSO currently only lists 1,610 municipalities.
• Exact list of cities and addresses/locations of City Halls and related offices
• Number of VOIP Lines required
• Existing number of direct lines to be replaced by VOIP lines
• Number of local lines used for calling within office premises (local intranet)
• Details of IT infrastructure or existing LAN configuration, if any, with number of user terminals or PCs and types of applications used (this information will help approximate the necessary bandwidth to deliver the required CIR to each user terminal)
• E-commerce application requirements
• Number of government-subscribed cellular phones that will be part of this program
For barangay LGUs
• List of participating barangays with the corresponding addresses/locations of barangay halls
• Number of VOIP lines needed per barangay hall (otherwise only one may be provided as part of the proposal)
• Number of PCs with Internet connectivity
• E-commerce application requirements.
(To be concluded)
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