Faster internet

I will never forget the late Louie Casambre. He was one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. Before he died, he was one of my successors at the now defunct National Computer Center (NCC). Louie was Undersecretary of the now also defunct Information and Communications Office (ICTO). I was formerly Undersecretary of NCC. Both NCC and ICTO were the forerunners of what is now the Dept. of Information and Communications Technology (DICT). Shortly before he died, I got to talk to Louie at one of the board meetings of the Philippine Information and Communications Technology Organization (PICTO). PICTO is the trade association of the ICT industry, and both of us where board members at that time. During our conversation, I asked Louie what he thought about the problem of slow internet. I was surprised at what he said, and I could never forget what he said. He said that in truth, fast internet is available in the Philippines, except that it is very expensive.

Analyzing what he said, probably what he really meant is that most people believe that internet in the Philippines is slow, because they could only afford to pay for internet services that are very slow. In other words, the problem in this country is not slow internet. The problem here is how to make fast internet more available to more people. The question now is how to make that happen.

I have four solutions to the problem, and I am happy to note that some of these solutions are already being implemented.

The first solution is to bring in other sources of bandwidth, and to not just rely on copper cables and fiber optics. To some extent, that is being done now by satellite providers such as Starlink, but I have not yet about other bandwidth sources such as microwaves, spread spectrum, low orbit balloons and TV white space.

The second solution is to build more internet exchanges where all internet service providers (ISPs) could pass through and share bandwidths for the benefit of everyone.

The third solution is to have more local caches where cookies that are commonly used could be banked instead of fetching these same cookies separately, over and over again from the same sources abroad.

The second solution is to combine at least two or more bandwidth sources into one synchronous flow, such that their combined speeds could become at least double. I understand that the privately owned ISPs may not easily agree to work together to implement these solutions in order to make internet speeds faster at more affordable prices. But since these solutions could possibly make the bandwidth providers save money on connectivity costs, it may enable them to pass on some savings to their customers thus lowering the prices.