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Will be guesting on ANC’s The Explainer with Manolo this Tuesday, 6PM to share my thoughts about the NBN Project. I wrote some of the underlying technical issues (politics aside) over at PTB and wanted to solicit more of your technical opinions on the matter.
Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.
Live within your means.I wish people could see the truth in this. Fact is we cant pay our foreign debts.
http://www.pinoysites.org/jcm/item/23/
Let me just give my two cents. First off, I believe that the NBN Project is NOT stupid.
We are an archipelago. So I’ll illustrate through an example how the NBN can solve this problem of distance. For those living in Manila and have not come from the provinces, it is really hard to renew your driver’s license in Manila given that you applied for one in your hometown. Let’s say a year ago you lived in Zamboanga, and got a driver’s license there. You moved to Manila and had to renew. Problem is, all your information is still back in Zamboanga. If the government had a NBN for all the LGUs and agencies, then they could just send the data from Zamboanga to Manila. Would you really want to go through the courts and re-do everything when all you wanted was to renew your license?
I just want to get this straight to everyone. We are living in the 21st century where information has to move. The trend a few years back was IT.. just Information Technology. It was all about storing the data and managing it. Now the trend is ICT or Information and Communication Technology precisely because data has to be used everywhere and anywhere at the right place and time.
Heck, even Korea has a super high-speed broadband network that’s for public use and not government use. Look at where they are now. They are one of gaming capitals of the world. Their research and development is booming. Their industry can compete with other first-world countries. This is because broadband allows information to travel fast so collaboration and information-sharing is also increased. I wish most people would see the light. Most don’t.
Abe,
Maybe it should be pointed out, in WiMAX you can actually choose to have a longer range or a higher bandwidth. In our case, since we are an archipelago, we could have one antenna with long range to serve southern islands and other remote places and a high bandwidth one here in Manila. It’s a 50km radius if we should reach, so an antenna in Guimaras can serve both Iloilo City and Bacolod City.
It’ll be good for business over all if we are WiMAX enabled well ahead of India, where I believe private corporations are leading the way.
Good Luck on the guesting, though.
Mike,
A WiMAX network here could definitely look good in our calling card.
What about from a policy/governance perspective? I did work for the NEDA and ICC before venturing into blogging and all things online. :)
Then again, I wouldn’t want to get into hot water for any info I might contribute.
My take on Singapore and Australia case is..
Singapore – this small country (city state) but rich can easily afford of have as may backbone as they wanted to.. heck since their land area is so small they could probably set it up in a day (exaggerated BTW lol).
Australia – Big land area, highly industrialized, top secret military capabilities, sensitive government data, terrorist target.. with this, the government could easily justify the need to have their own backbone.
I heard from someone Singapore and Australia are planning their own network simila to the NBN. I’m interested to see their plans for comparison.
Politics aside, the NBN is just stupid. The Philippine government is not YouTube; its bandwidth requirements simply do not justify building its own Internet backbone.