Internet Speed In The Philippines

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Jollygoodfellow
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Chiz vows to look into ‘pathetic’ Internet speed in the Philippines

MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero, who finds the Internet speed in the country “pathetic," said he will check its state and determine how the government can address the situation.

 
“The current situation in the country is, sad to say, unacceptable. The state of Internet speed is pathetic, and unless we remedy this situation, our IT (information technology) sector is likely to suffer in the long term," Escudero said.
 
Escudero called the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and the National Telecommunication Commission (NTC) to give the situation urgent attention.
 
“The government should crack the whip on our telecommunications companies. If they have to be mandated to allocate some of their earnings for improving Internet speed, mainly through investing in more equipment and hardware, then so be it,” Escudero said.
 
“These telcos have been going to town in the past few years telling their shareholders that they have been earning billions of pesos. But they conveniently forget the millions of subscribers and users who put those billions in their coffers but continue to suffer from poor service," Escudero added.
 
The senator stressed that the “pathetic state” of the country's Internet speed must be addressed immediately and said he is willing to spearhead a legislation that would help improve the situation.
 
“The problem is that government agencies that are supposed to monitor these telcos and help consumers don't seem to feel the urgency of the situation,” Escudero said.
 
Escudero, who also chairs the Senate Committee on Finance, said the slow Internet may derail the estimated growth of the IT-Business Process Outsourcing industry.
 
According to Escudero the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines recently reported that it was targeting $25 billion in revenues and 1.3 million jobs by 2016.
 
Escudero found the reported numbers alarming as the target may be affected if the Internet service in the country does not improve.
 
“We might see these jobs go to other countries in the region that can provide investors and clients better internet services,” Escudero warned.
 
Escudero cited recent reports by international Internet providers. The latest Ookla household download index report ranked the Philippines 21st out of 22 countries in Asia, only ahead of Afghanistan.Singapore ranked first with a broadband speed of 122.43 Megabits per second (Mbps) followed by Hong Kong with 102.96 Mbps. By contrast, household download speed in the Philippines was at 3.64 Mbps.
 
Meanwhile, Akamai's latest state of the Internet report showed that the country's average Internet speed in the fourth quarter of 2014 at 2.7 Mbps, peaking at 21.9 Mbps. South Korea had the fastest average Internet speed in Asia with 22.2 Mbps while Indonesia had the slowest at 1.9 Mbps.
 
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jon1
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Spend billions on infrastructure?  Philippines is an archipelago, so unless you're living in Luzon you're going to have to pay for satellite space to jump the air gap which is prohibitively expensive.  It works in Indonesia as they jumped on board very early in the game and they launched (or payed to have launched) the Palapa  and subsequent series of of satellites from the 70's and onward.  If you understand anything about radio spectrum bandwidth allocation you'll know that it is limited on these birds and is dependent on the width of the bearers in frequency spectrum on each satellite.  Unfortunately PI didn't have the foresight Suharto had in Indonesia, despite Marcos being a similarly striped dictator when all this was happening way back when... Indonesia is an archipelago 3 times the size of The Philippines.

 

Just a historical perspective but it is the root of the issue now.  

To top it all off, the majority of bandwidth comes via overseas fiber connections in undersea cable. Last time I checked (about 4 years ago), all external connections to the Philippines flow thru Manila first.

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Dave Hounddriver
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“The current situation in the country is, sad to say, unacceptable. The state of Internet speed is pathetic, and unless we remedy this situation, our IT (information technology) sector is likely to suffer in the long term," Escudero said.

 

These senators talk the talk but I bet he invests in PLDT

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Jollygoodfellow
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Spend billions on infrastructure?  Philippines is an archipelago, so unless you're living in Luzon you're going to have to pay for satellite space to jump the air gap which is prohibitively expensive.  It works in Indonesia as they jumped on board very early in the game and they launched (or payed to have launched) the Palapa  and subsequent series of of satellites from the 70's and onward.  If you understand anything about radio spectrum bandwidth allocation you'll know that it is limited on these birds and is dependent on the width of the bearers in frequency spectrum on each satellite.  Unfortunately PI didn't have the foresight Suharto had in Indonesia, despite Marcos being a similarly striped dictator when all this was happening way back when... Indonesia is an archipelago 3 times the size of The Philippines.

 

Just a historical perspective but it is the root of the issue now.  

To top it all off, the majority of bandwidth comes via overseas fiber connections in undersea cable. Last time I checked (about 4 years ago), all external connections to the Philippines flow thru Manila first.

 

 

 

You might find the map here, http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

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Thomas
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Philippines is an archipelago
Yes, but the cable TO Phils is much longer that it is between the islands, so it's possible to solve if enough money is spend.

 

At this time I use a Smart pocket wifi, sometimes it's quite good and at other times it won't load a page at all. I am living in a temporary rental through family, so DSL is not an option for me until a more permanent location is found. My question is, does anybody use their smartphone as a wifi hotspot? If so, does it work ok and how much would it drain load? If it is a viable option here I would hope it would be a back up for those connection out times. Just wondering!

I don't know in Phils, but I suppouse it's same.

In Thailand a guy with BAD SIGNAL solved it by hoisting up his mobile to close under the roof  (It solved the reliability but not the speed.) A more convinient solution some have for the REABILITY is geting an antenna or a satelite disc making the signal from the MOBILE post stronger.

 

Phils will never get internet speed in general as long as the suppliers DON'T UNDERSTAND the distance to sender is very important for the speed.  (Rural it's common they have put a sender close to the barangay hall, but no subamplifiers. (I don't believer that's the corect name, but I believe you understand what i mean   :)     Close to the barangay hall internet can be rather ok in the province, but the more far away the more crapy internet.  (When I installed ADSL connection to my villa in forest in Sweden, they said max 500 meters distance and I were just within that from a subamplifier.)

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Tukaram (Tim)
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My connection used to say either Manila, or sometimes Cebu.  Now it always shows Tokyo, Japan. Still horribly slow...and when I move out to the house we are building the speed will be cut in half (I have lived in that neighborhood before ha ha).  I run about 2.2 Mbps here - going back to half of that is unberable.  :tiphat:

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earthdome
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At this time I use a Smart pocket wifi, sometimes it's quite good and at other times it won't load a page at all. I am living in a temporary rental through family, so DSL is not an option for me until a more permanent location is found. My question is, does anybody use their smartphone as a wifi hotspot? If so, does it work ok and how much would it drain load? If it is a viable option here I would hope it would be a back up for those connection out times. Just wondering!

 

I did this when I first arrived using a Smart post paid unlimited data plan/SIMM. 999 pesos per month. Many months I would use over 10GB of data. Speed was around 1Mbs. Worked very well with my unlocked Samsung Galaxy smartphone with a wifi hotspot app I installed. But... this really is location specific. Worked great the first 5 months... then I moved to Baguio and it was barely usable at my new apartment.

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virginprune
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At this time I use a Smart pocket wifi, sometimes it's quite good and at other times it won't load a page at all. I am living in a temporary rental through family, so DSL is not an option for me until a more permanent location is found. My question is, does anybody use their smartphone as a wifi hotspot? If so, does it work ok and how much would it drain load? If it is a viable option here I would hope it would be a back up for those connection out times. Just wondering!

 

I did this when I first arrived using a Smart post paid unlimited data plan/SIMM. 999 pesos per month. Many months I would use over 10GB of data. Speed was around 1Mbs. Worked very well with my unlocked Samsung Galaxy smartphone with a wifi hotspot app I installed. But... this really is location specific. Worked great the first 5 months... then I moved to Baguio and it was barely usable at my new apartment.

Thanks for that. It has given me food for thought. I didn't realise you needed an app for that, on my "old" Galaxy the hotspot is already in connectivity settings.

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earthdome
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Thanks for that. It has given me food for thought. I didn't realise you needed an app for that, on my "old" Galaxy the hotspot is already in connectivity settings.

 

It may depend on the version of Android and who you got the phone from on whether the hotspot function is enabled by default or you need an app. In this case it was a Samsung Galaxy 2 which I got from AT&T on contract.

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virginprune
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Mine is a Galaxy 2 as well, on a contract from Three in the UK

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