By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
Honestly, as of this writing, I am not still dead certain the meeting with the NTC commissioners and telco representatives on July 27 will result in better Internet service in Tabuk City. We still have to see if the telcos take the agreements and their commitments seriously. We still have to see if the NTC will tolerate non-compliance by the telcos just in case. What is very clear in the tape is that, in response to Commissioner Cordoba, the telco representatives committed that they will upgrade their services in the city substantially within the next four months, meaning until November.
Let it be mentioned though that on August 3, Cordoba issued three memoranda to Smart and Globe. One is for them to set up their office complete with customer service representatives and technicians in the city, the second to provide information on their current capacity and current number of subscribers on or before August 11 and the third, reminded them that the monthly speed testing/validation will start in August. Although not stated in the memorandum, it is in the tape that the information on the capacity visavis number of subscribers would be provided to the City Information Office. It is now August 25 and we still have to receive the information. I just hope this is not an indication of things to come.
This reminds me that there is another deadline set during the meeting which has been missed. Acting Regulation Branch Director Walcien was supposed to provide the minimum speed data of the active plans of the telcos on or before August 4 but up to now, we still have not received the information.
Going back to directives to the telcos, I had asked Walcien what happens if the telcos defy the NTC and she replied that she believes that the companies will comply. Like I already said, that remains to be seen.
What is impending is the first speed testing which has been set on September 4-8. According to a memorandum of Cordoba to Deputy Commissioner Deles, the NTC-NCR will lead the activity with NTC-CAR and Region 2 assisting. What I understand from the memo and also during the meeting is that the Globe and Smart will be present during the activity and this is where some some Facebook friends and Internet users have expressed wariness. They pointed out that the tests should be conducted by the NTC without the knowledge of the telcos because of the possibility of manipulation of their bandwidths during the testing.
What happens during the test will indicate the seriousness and good faith of the telcos and the NTC regarding their shared commitment to improve the Internet services in the city. To my mind, any attempt for the tests to portray as situation alien to our usual Internet experience will not prosper considering the fact that users can conduct their own tests. I urge all subscribers who volunteer their connections to be tested to conduct speed tests using Ookla shortly before and shortly after and possibly in the presence of the NTC team to establish the difference between the results of the NTC official equipment and that of the Ookla. We then could factor the difference during tests we will be making in between the monthly tests the NTC will be conducting. On the whole, at the end or even before the end of the four months, the tests conducted by individual volunteers could show if there are suspicious sudden jumps in the speed of the connections during the NTC tests.
Regarding reliability of the Ookla, during the meeting on July 27, Walcien has revealed that since the NTC does not have enough standard Internet speed measuring devices to go around, it has allowed the usage of the Ookla speed testing application to test the speeds of the EDSA Free Wifi Project of the government.
We will see in the next four months if that two and half hour meeting in the NTC on July 27 was just a lot of talk or will translate to better Internet service in the locality. If it does not, then we shall disseminate the entire contents of the tape for the country to see the utter lack of word of honor among the current NTC commissioners and these telcos.**
