
Philippines to Roll Out Nationwide Free Wi-Fi Service by 2016 - prostoalex
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-07/philippines-to-roll-out-nationwide-free-wi-fi-service-by-2016
======
droithomme
Peru announced that all its poorest residents would be hooked up to full solar
power. In the end, a huge amount of money was spent and a couple hundred
houses were hooked up to very low wattage systems shared by entire villages.

India announced they were going to produce a $15 computer for the masses of
poor. Well we now have $15 computers, but not from this program, and India
still is lacking stable electricity, clean water, and other basics throughout
much of the nation.

"The Philippines is planning free Wi-Fi services to half of its towns and
cities this year and nationwide coverage by end-2016"

So the claim being made is half the towns and cities by this year, 2015,
within a few months. And total coverage by next year.

Most of the land area of the Philippines is remote and rural. Much is
mountainous. It would be a remarkable engineering project to have total wifi
coverage through the _entire_ country by 2016. Accomplishing it with $32
million in funding would be especially amazing.

The chance that this will happen I estimate at 0%. The chance of a modest
amount of coverage in certain neighborhoods of larger cities is good. Total
coverage by next year isn't going to happen, isn't going to ever happen for
the cited price, and the data point that it is being claimed it will happen by
next year shows that those in charge of this program don't understand the
problem, which means that the actually doable claims (coverage for 50% of all
towns and cities by December 2015) are questionable as well.

~~~
funkyy
To be honest I would propose even simpler approach: offer free high speed Wi-
Fi in every library. Connect every library in the country to high speed fiber
and make libraries relevant in digital world again. Since libraries are
usually spread evenly around the country I believe this would serve better
purpose than setting unrealistic targets.

~~~
jackjeff
You don't have a network of free public libraries in the Philippines...

~~~
davewasthere
There are, however, a lot of churches. :)

------
dexterbt1
Just skimmed, TLDR, the article and IDC links is slim on the technical
details. The DOST arm of the gov't has a little more detailed doc here:
[http://icto.dost.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Free-
Wi-F...](http://icto.dost.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Free-Wi-Fi-
Project-TOR.pdf)

The doc details that coverage is limited to public places (gov offices,
schools, libraries, etc), and aimed towards underserved users. Data cap is
measly 1GB per month per device ID, unless you have Gov't passport/ID (up to
3GB/mo); where a national-ID system required here means a decrease in privacy
and increased surveillance possibility. One can also smell a strong
possibility of this being backed a foreign-state.

------
jister
"The new service is expected to push data charges lower in the Philippines.
Access to the Internet costs about $18 a megabit per second in the country,
more than three times the global average of $5, according to research firm
International Data Corp. or IDC."

I don't think this will happen considering PLDT owns all the infrastructure:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Philippines/comments/2aurzq/how_pld...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Philippines/comments/2aurzq/how_pldt_deliberately_keeps_local_internet)

------
cpeterso
Free ubiquitous Wi-Fi would be an effective tool for tracking citizens'
internet habits and physical locations.

~~~
witty_username
And that's why the world needs to switch to HTTPS.

~~~
jauer
HTTPS has no bearing on the ability to track traffic volume, sites visited
(DNS), and device location (mac address).

~~~
witty_username
Correct. It's still better than nothing I guess.

------
pkaler
> The free Internet service will cost the government about 1.5 billion pesos
> ($32 million) a year and will be available in areas such as public schools,
> hospitals, airports and parks, said Monchito Ibrahim, deputy executive
> director of the Information and Communications Technology Office.

It's not free. It's subsidized.

This is the same debate I have with neighbors that want free wifi in the city.
Sure. Do you want higher property taxes, too?

~~~
vacri
If it means better services for me and the people around me, yes, give me
higher property taxes.

Being terrified of taxes is just peculiar - it's certainly not an argument-
winning trump card.

~~~
afarrell
It isn't being terrified of taxes. It is saying "things have a cost. Lets
start talking about the cost and asking if we're really willing to pay it."

~~~
vacri
It's not actually saying "let's start talking about the cost". "Do you want
higher taxes?" is a rhetorical statement that means "this is bad, because it
will raise our taxes, which I think is inherently bad"; there's no real
interest in a genuine discussion of the pros and cons.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
The con is it's very difficult to get a government to lower taxes, not so
difficult to have them increase it. Also that thing P.J. O'rourke said: giving
money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage
boys.

I'm not aware of having met anyone who has ever said "I want to pay more tax",
but I've met plenty of people who have said "that other group of people should
pay more tax".

~~~
nmrm2
_> The con is it's very difficult to get a government to lower taxes_

This isn't true at all. It's very difficult to get a government to decrease
the services it provides. If you decrease taxes without decreasing provided
services, then that would be extremely easy to do -- until you run out of
money. Look at the cluster fuck that is Kansas.

 _> I'm not aware of having met anyone who has ever said "I want to pay more
tax"_

In that case, you must either not live in the US or else live in a place with
either really shit or really parasitic public schools. A huge percentage of
school districts are majority funded by local (not state) tax dollars, at
rates that are approved directly (i.e., by ballot measure).

Schools are the most obvious case because increases in (local) taxes that fund
schools are typically ballot measures, and usually affect the population in a
pretty homogenous way (except in very urban areas, but even then, property
owners are usually a key voting block in local elections). But there are other
taxes that a _lot_ of people support increasing and would end up paying -- gas
tax, alcohol tax, etc.

If you've really never met someone who said "I want to pay more taxes", then
that's really just an indication that you're living in a bubble. It's not at
all an uncommon sentiment. In fact, I'd say that "some of the taxes I pay
could be higher if it's spent on the right things" is a far more common
sentiment than "taxes bad, period".

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Thanks for the reply. You're quite right, bit of a bubble here in Launceston,
Tasmania. Population of about 100,000and relatively benign government.

------
hendry
Yawn... go to Philippines... their international bandwidth sucks. Wifi will
change nothing.

~~~
thawkins
I get 2-3 megabits into most international sites on my 10 megabit line, im in
manila. Not amazing, but not that bad. They are just rolling out 20mb - 40mb
fibre.

The only major issue i have is that PLDT's dns is shit, so i have to reroute
everything to google dns.

~~~
reustle
Hey, off topic but are you based in Manilla? I'm headed there soon, would love
to chat! (no contact info in your hn profile)

~~~
wyclif
If you find out where engineers can work remote in the RP with acceptable
up/down speeds, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

~~~
JulienSchmidt
There are a few co-working spaces around Makati in Metro Manila and a few in
Cebu. These are probably also the only areas where you will be able to find
decent internet connection speeds.

Also OT: I'm a student from Germany who studied in the Philippines for a
while. I'm always interested to go back for a few months. If you have an
office in PH and looking for motivated developers, don't hesitate to contact
me.

~~~
wyclif
Thanks; there's also "Negros First CyberCentre" in Bacolod City, Negros
Occidental: [http://www.negros-occ.gov.ph/current-events/press-
release/ph...](http://www.negros-occ.gov.ph/current-events/press-
release/photo-release/inauguration-of-negros-first-cybercentre.html)

It would be great if it were possible to rent office space there, assuming you
could get decent up/down speeds. Bacolod City is a nice jumping-off spot for
the rest of the Visayas (and things like island-hopping and scuba diving).

~~~
JulienSchmidt
If you are looking for a jumping-off spot for the Visayas, Metro Cebu is the
place to go. It is a hub for the Philippine Nautical Highway and has the 2nd
largest airport in the country, with cheap flights to everywhere in the
Philippines and Southeast Asia.

~~~
wyclif
Cebu is also good. Easy to get from there to Palawan, Dumaguete City, Bohol,
Negros, Guimaras, etc.

------
elwell
Is Facebook paying for this behind-the-scenes? (There might be some precedent
for that.)

~~~
patkai
Maybe. But my first thought was the opposite, i.e. does the government _not_
want Facebook to provide free Internet for some reason?

~~~
JulienSchmidt
You can already use Facebook for free on mobile. I don't think FB has big
interest in providing free internet for everyone.

~~~
FilterSweep
It appears their interest lies in:

(a) having a competitive advantage in raw, large-scaled _metrics_ that Google
does not have (see also: Facebook's emotion and behavioral studies[0])

(b) Being able to monetize their advertising platform better. They are well
aware that their current numbers are blown up by fake likes, and clickfarms
[1]

At least this is just my take. I'm sure there are also other interests behind
the scenes.

[0]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-
tinker...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinkers-with-
users-emotions-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html?_r=0)

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag)

------
titfn
the US government should do that too... to make it easier to do mass
surveillance without having to go through hoops ...

~~~
balabaster
I think in light of the Snowden revelations, everyone in the U.S. would be
right to be suspicious of such an offering. Except of course those that have
nothing to hide. Of course, if you're not using the nation's free wifi, then
you're clearly up to no good and deserve a warrant for suspicious behaviour ;)

~~~
DanBC
If your threat model includes a well funded government then it doesn't matter
what wifi network you use.

~~~
balabaster
At this point, _everyone 's_ threat model should include a well funded
government. Of course, like everything else, you have to weigh convenience
against the cost of security. At some point you have to throw your hands up in
the air and say "whatever!" if they want to find _something_ against me, they
will surely find it. I think it was Cardinal Richeleu who was supposed to have
said "Find me 6 lines by the most honest man and I will find in them something
to have him hanged." [I paraphrase]

~~~
DanBC
The point is that moving away from free government provided WIFI does
_nothing_ to prevent the US government from getting anything they want, and it
is dangerous and irresponsible to suggest otherwise. We know this because the
US doesn't have government provided WIFI and they have an estimated 3 to 12
exabytes of planned storage at the Utah Data Center. (Where 5 exabytes would
be "all the words ever spoken by humans").

------
balabaster
If you're not paying for the product, you are the product. I can't think of an
easier way to monitor everything that's going on online than have every one of
your citizens use your wifi access points...

~~~
lhopki01
That's such a glib saying that has no relevance here. You're not paying to
visit the park - you are the product. You're not paying to use the local
library - you are the product. Oh wait you are. That's what taxes are used
for.

