Cebu City Hall’s Plaza Sugbo will be a pilot area for free Wi-Fi service, hopefully before the year ends. (CDN PHOTO/TONEE DESPOJO)
Gov’t project for public sites in Cebu City
But 250 kbps speed too slow for videos, music
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Some public places in Cebu City like City Hall will be pilot sites of free Wi-Fi under a proposal of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) before the year ends.
Cebu City was chosen as one of 967 beneficiaries of the P1.4 billion Free Wi-Fi Internet Service Initiative launched by the national government for public places like parks, plazas and government buildings.
But the Internet speed offered at 256 kbps (kilobits per second) is nothing for private telecom firms to worry about.
Users can e-mail and browse websites with few images, but videos and songs would be difficult to download.
In an Oct. 6 letter to Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama, Science and Technology Undersecretary Louis Napoleon Casambre asked to allow the DOST to conduct site inspection and installation works within Cebu City. The project was supposed to start last September.
Access point
A team from the DOST Information and Communication Technology Office (ICTO) will visit this month to inpsect potential areas, said City Administrator Lucelle Mercado.
“We haven’t met, but they’ve been telling us that for City Hall, they want to provide an access point in the Plaza Sugbo grounds. We’re still waiting for their go signal,” said Conrado Ordesta III, chief of City Hall’s Management Information Computer System (MICS).
Wi-Fi access points will cover selected public spaces based on the project’s Terms of Reference (TOR) in the DOST-ICTO’s website.
This includes plazas and parks, public primary and secondary central schools, public libraries, rural health units and government hospitals, state universities and colleges, train stations, airports and seaports, city and municipal halls, and national government offices.
Fair use
Upon completion, the free Wi-Fi will serve 105,000 users with an allocation of 256 kbps (kilobits per second) each.
This is the lowest prevailing speed requirement for a broadband service.
Users will also be subjected to a Fair Usage Policy that will impose limits on the amount of data that they can be allowed to transfer.
Setting a cap on data is also done private telcos to avoid overbudrening their system.
Campaign
Ordesta said that with 256 kbps, a user can e-mail and check websites that don’t have a lot of images.
To stream short videos, however, expect long buffering periods. Ordesta said the downloading of songs and other files will be extremely difficult.
Casambre, who chairs the DOST-ICTO, said the project is part of the national government’s “Internet for all” campaign under its Philippine Digital Strategy of 2011-2016.
Cebu City, Iloilo City, Calbayog City in Leyte and Tacloban City in Samar were identified as beneficiaries of the project which is also aimed at third to sixth class towns.
For Luzon, the identified Points of Presence include Tugegarao, Cagayan; Dagupan, Pangasinan; San Fernando, Pampanga; Lipa City, Batangas; Legaspi City, Albay; and Puerto Princesa, Palawan.
Reasonable use
In Mindanao, the locations are Butuan City, Butuan; Pagadian City, ARMM; Davao City, Davao del Sur; and Zamboanga City, Zamboanga.
The project is supposed to be completed by November this year.
Agencies and local government units where the access points will be established are supposed to help implement this, including “reasonable use” of electricity and other facilities to ensure security of the equipment.
Based on the project’s TOR, the Philippines only has a 52-percent Internet penetration rate. This is almost double the 27-percent rate in 2010.
It said the average connection speed is about 2.1 Mbps (megabytes per second), with only eight percent of users enjoying speeds faster than 4 Mbps.
“This project aims to accelerate the government’s efforts in enhancing Internet accessibility for Filipinos to accelerate economic, social and educational opportunities and in reducing the growing Digital Divide under the overarching e-Filipino Program of the DOST ICT Office,” according to the project’s executive summary.
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