One of the good things about the COVID-19 pandemic is that it reveals what business organisations are actually capable of given a call to step up the quality and performance of their products and services. According to a Rappler “report”, it turns out top national telco Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) company has “more than sufficient capacity for the added bandwidth that customers who work or study from home demand due to the coronavirus threat”. This raises the question of why, for so long, Filipinos have complained about the low levels of quality and reliability of the Internet services provided by PLDT.
According to PLDT spokesperson and head of public affairs Ramon Isberto, “they would be providing a speed boost for fiber customers in Metro Manila, Rizal, Bulacan, Laguna, and Cavite so that the minimum speed will be 25Mbps”. Even more astounding, PLDT are able to commit to mount the “technical preparations” to deliver this boost in performance within a week!
If I were a PLDT customer, I’d be really angry. It turns out that with so little “technical preparation” PLDT are actually able to upgrade the quality of their Internet service. Instead, however, customers have long put up with PLDT’s atrociously substandard — and expensive — Internet service.
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In this light, it is easy to see through the dishonest announcement made by PLDT Chairman Manny Pangilinan on Twitter, making it out as if PLDT is contributing above-expectations service as a favour to its customers in a time of COVID-19 pandemic.
The fact is, PLDT has long been part of the problem of the Philippines’ renowned place in the world as a region of absolutely bad Internet. According to a 2016 Forbes report, PLDT “controls much of the infrastructure, allowing it to charge fees higher than elsewhere in Asia despite a relatively poor population. The phone company goes on to charge other providers for traffic through its network as well”.
Even more outrageous, Forbes also reports that PLDT and its partners in monopoly were instrumental in blocking the entry of new players in the Philippines’ telco market that could have introduced new technologies and infrastructure to uplift performance!
Philippine conglomerate San Miguel Corp. wants to enter the market and was assigned 90% of an “attractive,” available 700 megahertz spectrum, IHS senior research analyst Seth Wallis-Jones says. But the country’s two current wireless providers, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Globe Telecom, oppose that allocation. They are vying for a share of that spectrum ”through the courts and by lobbying the president, which is adding some uncertainty and delay,” he says.
PLDT has a lot to answer for now that it is claiming it is in an easy position to “boost” Internet performance and package this as some sort of “gift” to the Filipino people in these times of crisis. This could be construed as a lame attempt to score PR points on the back of the suffering of the people of an entire nation. Shame on PLDT!
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
This is how these companies owned by the oligarchs, scam us : they are Lousy in their services and performances, charged us High Fees for their lousy services, and pay people and media to serve as their Public Relation army, to blind us and , to hype their services and performance to “high heavens”…
They also finance “prostituted politicians” to pass and block laws, to favor them and their companies, to have the monopoly… We can see this on the ABS CBN, close down issue. How many “prostituted politicians’ went to the defense of the oligarchs’ media conglomerate ?
We must have “anti trust laws”, that will remove the monopolies of these oligarchs. Until, a good amount of competition will be on services, and performances of these companies, nothing will improve !
It’s called SPARE capacity and overtime work benign0!
Why dont you put the blame where it belongs?!?! This government refused to ban international flights from Wuhan even when virus was already rapidly spreading. Thats cause we are BOUGHT by China.
I am now convinced that benign0 has taken CHINESE money to spew propaganda in line with the CCP. Now this is the perfect time to execute MARTIAL LAW to deliver philippines to China in a silver platter. Hope you enjoy your dirty dirty communist money in Australia benign0.
We are doomed.
I never thought being Sinophobic and fearmongering would be this cool.
You said, “We are doomed?” I would like you and your fellow ilk to incite mass violence, riots and rape against the Chinese and the Filipino-Chinese community. Just like what happened in 1998 where there are riots in Indonesia. And the target? The Chinese!
Hope you are proud of yourself for this false nationalism that you have, that would result to severe consequences.
Fake news. DSL is slow. Fibr is a new tech being rolled out. What a dumb report
In a parallel universe, Elon Musk will probably buy PLTD and rename it “The Phoney Company” to add to his collection.
i thought you were for free enterprise and capitalism? do you think if would be better if duterte wil determnine the required bandwidt for each customer? does duterte know what bandwidth means…
This company deserves to be shut down for good. They have been milking the Filipino people of their hard earned money for so long in return for a lousy, substandard service. The only thing they are good at is billing.
I hope PRRD takes notice of this.