Angara on DICT Bill: Is The DOST-ICTO Not Enough for All ICT Initiatives?

Senator Juan Edgardo Angara at the 2nd day of the National ICT Summit 2015 held at the Hotel Intercontinental Manila from June 23 to 24.

The senator made the keynote speech for the 2nd day and tackled the DICT Bill which proposes to setup a dedicated department in the government to manage ICT requirements in the country.

"Nakakatawa" to again mention how poor our Internet speed ("mabagal at di mapagkatiwalaan na Internet service sa bansa") and stating that we are placed at the 176th position out of 202 countries according to the Ookla household download index. "Hindi po natin pwedeng ipagmalaki 'to" according to Angara. Pati na rin ang pagiging 19th place of the Philippines for viewing the most Internet porn.

"Nakakatuwa" that even the issue about the Valkyrie dance club regarding its antiquated "No Crossdressing Policy" was also mentioned to stress how viral issues similar to it are more prominent online.

"Hell hath no fury like a person whose gender identity has been scorned and whose Twitter account has many followers."

True enough, the Filipinos are more popular backing up online sports figures like Manny Pacquiao or celebrities like the KathNiel love tandem. They tweet, post, share, and do everything on social media until they favorite personalities goes viral or trending.

I wish we could be as passionate for more urgent and critical concerns and issues of the country.

More at http://www.wazzuppilipinas.com

Cloud Access: Too Slow in the Philippines?

This Reynaldo Lugtu Jr, VP of IT Enabled Services Group of Globe Telecom, was laughingstock earlier at the NICT Summit 2015.

He was boasting that their cloud service passed industry standards after some testing. But when a guy from UP asked him if they have documentations of the testing, he said they don't have any, but he is willing to discuss it off the stage.

The guy from UP said something like this: That's the problem with you telcos, you are not transparent to the public, it would be better if you will publicly disclose the findings so everyone will benefit.

The questioning stopped and they resumed with a raffle instead where Globe Telecom gave away some electronic weighing scales and smartphones.

This happened after an earlier concern that the local cloud provider has speed or latency problems thus users are worried that access to data in the cloud may be too slow. Some are contemplating on using out-of-country cloud service for reliability. But this guy from Globe Telecom insisted that their testing has revealed that their cloud service passed industry standards. However, it is baffling that they couldn't show any documentations on this claim.

Which standard is he referring to?

Our broadband in the Philippines couldn't even pass global standards (this is why we have one of the slowest Internet connectivity as compared with most countries), what more their cloud service.

More on http://www.wazzuppilipinas.com

Net Neutrality: Does It Still Exist in the Digital Market

PLDT Alpha Enterprise's Head of Corporate Business Solutions, Mr. Benedict Patrick Alcoseba, was questioned about how SafeZone is very much anti-net neutrality.

PLDT's SafeZone gives preference to big companies who can afford the service. How about small to medium enterprises who don't have the money to join SafeZone?

We must understand that telcos should just provide the "pipe" without any preference to any type of content, or company, for that matter. PLDT is using its market power to benefit only a few and blatantly disregards how openness the Internet should be. If you don't have the dough to pay the necessary cost of shouldering the expense incurred by your customers on the PLDT pipeline, then the customers might just make use of the competitors services.

We also cannot use SafeZone if we are not using a PLDT, Smart or Sun line because it is limited only to their subscribers.

As a telco company, what has PLDT really have done to encourage utilization of services over the Internet? There's 46K public schools out there but only 17% are accessible via Internet.

What is PLDT doing to address the lack of broadband infrastructure, and with regards to the Internet speed that is not at par with our neighbors?

More at http://www.wazzuppilipinas.com