Using Broadband Cap To Hide System Deficiency

Days ago, I blogged about some of our Internet Service Providers’ (ISPs’) move to adopt “fair use policy” in their broadband business to prevent a small minority from hogging the bandwidth to the detriment of the great majority of users. As such, our ISPs are saying that they are imposing a data cap to subscribers who exceed their subscribed bandwidth. However, could this be just a convenient way to hide the real situation of their systems regarding network capacity and capability to provide reliable quality broadband service?

As I write this article, the Philippines is ranked 116th in the World’s Household Download Index by online NetIndex.com with an average speed of 2.13 Mbps (Megabits per second). The figure is way below the top 34.31 Mbps download speed in South Korea and about four (4x) times slower than the mean average of 8.65 Mbps for the measurements in 170 countries for the past 30 days. It also does not show the frequent slowdowns and disconnections that we are experiencing with our DSL connections. On top of this, our monthly average cost of PhP1,000/Mbps is very high compared to say PhP1,300 (2600 Yen) that my son pays for his 100 Mbps residential DSL subscription in Tokyo, Japan.

The above facts clearly show that the quality and cost of the  broadband services or DSL connections being provided to us by our telcos or ISPs are way below par if compared with the rest of the world. So the question is why put a limit on something that is below standard. If their poor services are caused by what they call the “bandwidth hogs”, why don’t they run after them? After all, they also say that they consist only five (5%)  percent of their total users. Why punish the big majority for the sins of the very small minority?

Our ISPs are also saying that limiting our bandwidth usage is the only way for them to deliver the connection speed that we pay them in our subscriptions. Is this the truth or they want to implement broadband caps so that they can put in more subscribers to their already deficient systems? Should our regulating agency allow them to that without having to check their current system capacity? We can only wait and see.

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