DOST’s Free Wi-Fi project finally pushing through
The P1.408-billion project of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) that would provide Internet connectivity to almost a thousand unserved or underserved fourth- to sixth-class municipalities in the country is finally pushing through.
DOST Undersecretary Louis Napoleon Casambre, executive director of the department’s Information Communications Technology Office ( ICTO), said they had come out with the tender for two major components of the Free Wi-Fi in Public Places project.
“The first two tenders for the free Wi-Fi project are out, which hopefully will get us to the installation of 14 POPs (points of presence) and the (setting up of Internet infrastructure in) 967 municipalities,” Casambre told The STAR.
Casambre said they would be doing a total of five tenders for the entire project, noting that terms of reference (TOR) of the project has been distributed to prospective bidders.
“As the project will be entirely implemented through managed services to be provided by the private sector, we are sharing this document so they might begin preliminary preparations for the formal tenders that will begin within the month,” he said.
Based on the timetable of the March tender, the DOST-ICTO targets to start rolling out the winning bidder by July this year.
According to the TOR, the project targets to cover fourth- to sixthclass municipalities, which involve setting up free Wi-Fi Internet hotspots in town plazas, public areas in libraries and schools, and rural health units among others.
“Once fully deployed, the project will serve 105,000 concurrent users with 256 kilobyte per second each, which is the lowest prevailing speed requirement for broadband service,” the TOR said.
The average connection speed in the Philippines runs at 2.1 megabyte per second, with only slightly above eight percent of Internet users enjoying a connection speed faster than 4 mbps.
The project will entail the setup of 18,117 Wi-Fi access points all over the country.
The STAR learned that the winning bidder would also be managing the entire Wi-Fi Internet system.
According to the DOST- ICTO, the project would use Next Generation Hotspot (NGH), or Hotspot 2.0 technology, throughout the network to promote a ubiquitous ICT environment, the efficient use of private and public sector investments and a more competitive ICT ecosystem.
Casambre earlier said the government’s effort to make free Internet accessible to the countryside is seen to jumpstart economic development in terms of e-commerce, e-learning and e-government.
World Bank studies showed that for every 10- percent increase in broadband connectivity, a country’s Gross Domestic Product also increases by 1.38 percent.