Makati putting up City-Wide WiFi Zone

In a bid to embrace conveniences that the internet can provide, the City Government of Makati has just announced that they are now making preparations to build a city-wide network of free WiFi service.

This announcement was made during the current city Mayor Jejomar Binay Jr.’s 35th birthday — in conjunction with the city hall being a WiFi zone, will serve as a starting point for the continuous implementation of the said project that will soon find its way into 33 other barangays in the near future. “We are planning to pursue citywide wi-fi connectivity, and City Hall is a good place to start. Then we will select two pilot barangays first before gradually covering the entire city,” as stated by the mayor himself.

The main purpose of engulfing the city with WiFi signal is to ease communication between the city government, barangays and various sectors. According to the city’s official website: “Students of both public and private schools will also gain immense benefits when they have free access to internet” — which is a very logical statement given that the internet is an artificial galaxy filled with endless amounts of data which can be helpful in enriching the young people’s minds.

The project was made possible due to the city government’s partnership with the Philippine Long-Distance Telecommunications, PLDT — also the country’s largest telecom company — will be providing the city with free use of its WiFi Zone service via a dedicated communication line to ensure a fast and stable internet connection.

On an interview done with Interaksyon, Mayor Jejomar Binay Jr. has mentioned that there are indeed some issues with the cost of putting up the infrastructure. The cost is said to be “relatively large” which isn’t at all that surprising given that Makati City boasts a land area of just a little over 27 square kilometers — naturally they still have to do some preliminary testing to determine the positive outcome of the project to make sure that all the taxpayers’ money won’t go to waste.

“We thank our private sector partner, PLDT, for helping us take this first step towards becoming the country’s first WiFi City, which will significantly speed up the delivery of services and benefits to our constituents and stakeholders,” Binay said.