The National Telecommunications Commission is seeking financial assistance from the Asian Development Bank to develop a five-year national broadband plan.
“They are ready to consider providing financial assistance,” NTC deputy commissioner Edgardo Cabarios said, referring to ADB.
Cabarios said the proposed blueprint aimed to improve telecom and broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas in the Philippines.
“We are getting information from telcos and regional offices and we are targeting to finish the blueprint before the end of the administration,” he said.
Cabarios earlier said the government was unlikely to meet its goal to provide an Internet download speed of at least 2 megabits per second to 80 percent of households across the country by 2016.
Cabarios said at the rate of P60-billion annual investment by telcos, it would take 10 years to meet the target, if there was no government intervention.
He said the investment requirement for at least 2 Mbps for 20.17 million households by 2016 would cost P800 billion.
The government of Thailand invested $114 million to provide Internet service as part of its economic policy. Malaysia, meanwhile, spent $4.5 billion over a period of 10 years to lay fiber optic lines to every home in Malaysia’s urban areas.
The International Telecommunication Union said only 18.9 percent of the Philippine households had Internet connection in 2012.
The NTC proposed a law to require telecommunication companies to remit a small portion of their earnings to the government to fund broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas.
Under the draft bill titled An Act Institutionalizing A Universal Access Fund, one-fourth of 1 percent of the gross revenues of all public telecommunications entities should be collected and automatically appropriated to the UAF.
The UAF should be used to provide ICT or broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas.
The country’s two largest telecommunications companies in 2014 reported combined gross revenues of P264 billion. Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. registered revenues of P165.1 billion while Globe Telecom Inc. posted P99 billion.
The proposed bill will also require the NTC to remit 90 percent of the annual spectrum users fees paid by the telcos to the UAF as an automatic appropriation.
The NTC collects nearly a half a billion pesos annually from the telcos and broadband operators for the use of frequencies.
