Having Cheap Broadband

In the news last week were two (2) important statistics about broadband Internet service in country. The first one says that the Philippines has the cheapest price for broadband access among nineteen (19) emerging countries surveyed by research firm Ovum. And with the cost of Internet access going down, the second report about a new Net Index Survey conducted by Internet giant Yahoo and research firm Nielsen revealed that a shift from shared (in i-cafés) to private (home) access is fast shaping up in the country.

While having the lowest cost of broadband Internet access seems good news for many of us, the bad news is, the Ovum survey showed that broadband still remains completely out of reach for the majority of the Filipinos. The same report also said that consumers living in emerging markets are still paying far more for fixed and wireless broadband than those in matured markets of developed countries.

We all know that our current cost per month of a promised one megabit per second (1Mbps) broadband Internet access for both fixed and wireless connections is about PhP1,000.00 (US$23.53 at Peso-Dollar exchange rate = 42.50:1.00). We also know that majority of the broadband subscribers in our country are complaining about not getting the connection speed promised by their providers. I wonder if this fact was considered in the survey result because if the actual bandwidth was used, our broadband cost may turn out to be more expensive than the others.

Regarding our paying far more for fixed and wireless broadband than those in matured markets of developed countries, I wish to mention about my son’s 100Mbps subscription in Tokyo, Japan that costs him JPY3,000 (PhP1,665) per month. The Japan figures on the speed and cost of connection shows we are paying sixty (60x) times more for our broadband service. How is that for comparison?

I will be coming up with another article about my take on the new Yahoo-Nielsen Net Index Report that I mentioned above. Watch for it!