New Delhi: The government of Philippines is planning to offer free WiFi across the nation by the next year, limiting data revenue prospects for two of the country’s main phone companies- Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co and Globe Telecom Inc.
The cost of offering free Internet services has been estimated to be around 1.5 billion pesos ($31 million) a year. Free public WiFi will be made available in areas such as schools, hospitals, airports, and parks.
Monchito Ibrahim, deputy executive director of the Information and Communications Technology Office, said, “If subscribers move to using free public WiFi, telecoms may need to lure them into getting higher-end services,” Bloomberg reports.
The focus of the government is on areas that absolutely don’t have access to the Internet. The nationwide rollout of free WiFi is also expected to lower data charges in the country which are currently $18 a megabit per second, more than three times the global average of $5.
The service would push the telecoms to improve their services and offer higher speeds than the government service which will offer speeds of 256kbs/second that is said to be enough for basic Internet surfing or access Facebook.
On the other hand, Singapore, which started offering free WiFi service back in 2006, now offers speeds of 2mbs/second which is eight times faster than the one planned for Philippines.
The rollout will be done in phases with half of the towns and cities to be covered by the end of this year and the remaining by 2016.
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