Working from home exposes PH’s digital shortcomings

INTERNET connectivity has long been a vital thread in the Philippine social fabric, but under the conditions of the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon and many other areas of the country, it has literally become a key to survival for a vast segment of the public and the business sector.

To no one’s surprise, unfortunately, two weeks of lockdown conditions have begun to expose the shortcomings in the country’s telecommunications (telecom) infrastructure, making it increasingly difficult for businesses and individuals to stay productive and connected in these difficult times. Worse still, our unavoidably isolated conditions have deepened social and economic divisions, further marginalizing the poor by rendering them almost completely incapable of communicating with the outside world.

As the lockdown drags on, complaints of poor internet connectivity and even inconsistent cellular phone service have grown in volume. These complaints are nothing new — expressing frustration toward the country’s two telecom providers is virtually a national pastime — but they have taken on added urgency under present circumstances.

Being able to remain in contact with friends and family is not simply a social and emotional benefit, but is necessary for one’s safety. Likewise, businesses, whose normal activities have been restricted, need to maximize online opportunities as much as possible in order to survive the temporary suspension of most of the economy. Under present conditions, inadequate connectivity is not simply an annoyance, but a real threat.

The telecom providers should not bear all the blame for those inadequacies being experienced now; like everyone else, they are grappling with an unexpected and practically unimaginable situation, and are suffering the same constraints in conducting their business. Under lockdown conditions, where many more businesses than usual are trying to keep working in some fashion online and everyone else is busy trying to dispel boredom, the volume of internet and cellular communication traffic has grown immensely in a very short period of time. We could scold them for not having planned for the sort of scenario we are now experiencing but, on the other hand, no one planned for this, much to our mutual detriment.

Rather, we are seeing the bad results of a couple of decades of poor planning and poor policy on the part of the government, ridiculous franchise constraints that have discouraged network expansion and improvement, and a policy environment that has not simply discouraged outside investment in telecom but aggressively sought to prevent it. That began to change under the Duterte administration with the long overdue approval of a third telecom provider. But the process is still hampered by too much red tape and accommodation of vested interests, and has been too slow to be of any use to the country now, just when the expanded capacity is needed most.

Of course, it is easy now, with the benefit of hindsight, to score the major telecom providers and the government for a lack of foresight and strategy. It is also rather pointless to do so. The current situation is what it is; what matters now is what can be done to improve it in the short term for a country that is under a great deal of economic and social stress, and for the long term so that capabilities are in place for the next national-scale crisis.

There are two challenges and solving them in the short term will contribute to better long-term infrastructure. The first is to expand connectivity to reach those who do not have access now. The second is to improve the capacity and performance of the telecom network to make the Philippines more competitive not just in connectivity, but in what businesses and people can do with the capabilities.

Solving these challenges requires a cooperative effort between the telecom industry and government and the way that should start is for the government to consider telecom priority infrastructure, including it in its strategies for addressing the coronavirus pandemic. So far, virtually nothing has been said about telecom issues, apart from a request (which was subsequently honored) from the government to internet streaming companies to slow their transmission rates to avoid bogging down the network. Much more needs to be done to help the country withstand and recover from the current crisis, as well as ones that will arise in the future.