DICT EYES PILOT TEST FOR FIBER BACKBONE THIS Q4

THE Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is ramping up the realization of the National Broadband Plan (NBP) as it seeks to fire up the fiber backbone this fourth quarter.

The agency said on Thursday that the National Fiber Backbone (NFB) would have a pilot run between November and December this year in some parts of the 6,154-kilometer dark fiber network of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

In June, the DICT secured a tripartite agreement with the NGCP and the National Transmission Corp. ( TransCo) for the utilization of spare optical fiber to hasten the implementation of the NBP.

For the implementation of the pilot project, seven point-to-point routes have been included in Benguet, Tarlac, Pampanga, Batangas, Mindoro, Albay, Camarines Sur, Cagayan, and Bohol, the agency said.

DICT acting chief Eliseo Rio has said that for the broadband plan to be operational, it needed to have international gateway facilities (IGFs), backbone, middle mile and last mile.

He said the project had already secured the IGF and backbone through social media giant Facebook’s construction of the Luzon Bypass Infrastructure to improve internet speeds to as fast as 2 terabits per second, which is expected to be operational by the end of 2019, and the fiber deal with TransCo and NGCP.

The DICT may spend less than P20 billion for the NBP, lower than the initial forecast of at least P77 billion, Rio said in June.

“[ We are estimating] roughly less than P20 billion,” he told reporters.

He said “a big chunk” of the budget was removed following partnerships with the mentioned organizations.

Meanwhile, the agency was optimistic its P2-billion 2019 budget proposal would be approved as this would hasten the development of the broadband plan.