Facebook on the tortoise's back

If we can’t come up to speed, why would people come to invest?

Anyone in the Philippines who uses a laptop or a computer is well aware of how frustrating it is to connect to the Internet because the technology or the various service providers in the country are SO SLOW.

When we say, “SLOW”, it has to do with the speed by which local bandwidth can process the data that you are trying to access or download from the Web. Unfortunately, we have always lived by the dictum that “paupers can’t be choosers”, so we live with the below-standard quality given by telecom companies.

Last Tuesday, I hosted dinner for several young individuals who have been helping me understand how to get into the 21st century through the Web and social communications. As a result my wife and I have recently joined Facebook and are now doing catch up about Twitter, Podcasts and live stream.

As they say, people who have been deprived of sustenance tend to gorge.

It didn’t take long for our guests to compare notes about products and frustrations. That’s when they collectively thumbed down ALL local service providers for being too slow in transmitting data and having patchy service for customers using DSL. Being the newbie I took it all as “something we simply live with”.

But that all changed when Kyle Uy, a college student from Chicago, talked about the difference between the speed and consistency of DSL in the United States. It was like comparing a brand new Porsche to a beat up Volkswagen. Then Carlo Ople, a well known blogger and Randell Tiongson who set-up a fan page for me, joined in and shared their experience in Hong Kong and Korea where the DSL providers were much more faster than in the Philippines.

I was ready to surrender and simply conclude that the difference was technology and price. But all the local boys chorused that we have the technology. The real cause of the SLOW transmission is that the local providers have been choking or strangling the “system” in order to sell “SPEED” at different levels and different prices.

The lowest priced wireless internet connection I know costs P600 a month and that moves up from company to company going from P999, P2,000 for 2X the speed all the way to P4,000 for 4X the average speed sold to ordinary Filipinos. And those prices don’t even include the business rates.

That’s when I understood why there was so much marketing and promotional hype about who had the fastest DSL and why they had packages or various rates.

Whenever I’m around students, the irreverent lot almost always picks on my “stick” and tell me that in Baguio you go with the “Bro”. On the other hand the young professionals always make the point that whenever you’re in Ayala territory you show your “Tattoo”. Those who roam the Web in Metro Manila with greater intensity all bask under the “Sun”. Carlo even claims that after 10 p.m the “Sun” is on the rise because it’s transmission speed almost doubles.

This tells us that all the DSL and “roaming with a stick” providers are only good within their established territories, which explains why a number of people like myself go around with two or three “DSL on a stick”. Not only are they slow, they are intermittent and inefficient.

So I was back at “paupers can’t be choosers”. But when I asked Kyle about prices in the US relative to speed, it turns out that after adjusting cost of living etc. we are actually already paying the same prices as other countries except we are not getting our money’s worth.

It also shows us that the telecoms have been making billions of pesos through INTENTIONAL INEFFICIENCY.

It reminded me of all the convoluted tactics and marketing strategies that many telecoms have used in the past in order to squeeze every centavo of profit from our pockets by chopping up services or delaying the full roll-out of interconnectivity, roaming and now the internet.

Congress has gone a long way to shake up the telecoms industry in response to consumer complaints about dropped call charges, restrictions and expiry dates on pre-paid cards and SIM cards because there has been a loud public outcry.

Unfortunately Congress and even government officials have dangerously overlooked the DSL-Wi-fi roaming service of telecoms. The current situation is very bad for business as a whole and bad for investments in particular.

The first two things that “advance teams” and research personnel realize in any country is the level and quality of their cellular phone network and the DSL-Wi-fi roaming services.

Ever since the Philippines and Filipinos got connected to the Web, the one thing that has not changed is the unanimous opinion of both locals and foreigners alike that connectivity in the Philippines is SLOW and often frustrating.

In terms of fixing what can be fixed, making the telecoms get up to speed should be a priority because it’s no longer a luxury but a business necessity. And in terms of social progress and social justice, the Filipinos are entitled to one speed at one price. We are paying the price, but we are not getting the speed for progress!