Manila: The Philippine government is accelerating plans to connect various areas of the country, including far-flung provinces, in an information highway to make information exchange faster and help clear up roads of heavy vehicular traffic.
In a press briefing at the presidential palace on Tuesday, Secretary Rodolfo Salalima of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), said efforts to wirelessly interconnect various parts of the country have received impetus with the operationalisation of a Wi-Fi connection running along the more than 24 kilometre stretch of the Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA), Metro Manila’s main traffic artery.
The EDSA Wi-Fi project was formally launched last Monday on the occasion of the country’s 119th Independence Day.
“EDSA Wi-Fi will benefit the hundreds of thousands of commuters along EDSA daily,” Salalima said.EDSA Wi-Fi is a free service to the public and targets mainly commuters, who had to endure hours bogged down in traffic everyday, making their working day less productive.
“The plan is to put up all Wi-Fi facilities in sites. Citizens travelling along EDSA will have access to the telecommunication services so that in the event that they ran late for work, they can communicate to their home or to their offices,” said.
According to an earlier study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Philippines is losing billions of pesos everyday in lost worker productivity and unfulfilled opportunities due to the poor road traffic situation.
Salalima said the government had also embraced the concept of “telecommuting”, to enable people to access more opportunities and continue being productive.
“There are times when you need to work, there are times when you need to learn. But it does not necessarily follow that you have to go to your physical places of work or to school just to learn or to physical places of conference because there is a concept called telecommuting..
“Teletransporting, or telepresence, is when workers can work without necessarily going to work, where children can learn from schools without necessarily going to school,” he said.
Salalima also said the Philippines now can boast of fast Internet speed.
“We made a test of the Internet speed and we monitored something like 200 to 300 megabytes per second upload and download. The world record is something like 40 megabytes per second and this is being held by South Korea,” he said.
Telecommuting also opens more opportunities to rural areas, given the benefits of faster Internet connection, Salalima said.
“In Lanao del Norte where there is fertile plain, farmers can earn more income by working in the business process outsourcing industry during their spare time,” he said.
