TABUK CITY, Kalinga – Fiber optics Internet services, the latest in Internet technology, will be available in the city in time for the city’ foundation day celebration in June.
This developed as the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) approved the extension of the fiber optic network of the company to the city.
Engr. Ruel Brual, PLDT Tuguegarao City branch manager, informed during a courtesy call to Mayor Ferdinand Tubban on April 4 that the target completion of the project is June 1.
Brual told the mayor that one feeder will emanate from Tuguegarao City and the other from Roxas explaining that the two connections will ensure that the city will have an alternative line in the event that the one in use is cut.
Even as he thanked the PLDT for the project that will pull the city abreast other localities in the country in Internet services, Tubban took the opportunity to demand that the telecommunications companies (telcos) doing business in the city should pay what is due to the city.
He lamented that Smart and Globe have both invoked alleged exemptions when the LGU tried to collect realty taxes for their towers and equipment some years back.
The mayor said that what’s galling is that the companies pay realty taxes to another LGU in the Cordillera.
Brual promised that he will relay the concern of the mayor to the PLDT management.
Brual informed the mayor that the fiber optic project was prompted by a complaint lodged with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) on the dismal state of Internet services of both Smart and Globe in the city way back in 2015.
He said that his proposal to extend the fiber optic services of the company to the area was approved by PLDT management last year.
The Internet technology currently available in the city is the wireless. **By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
