MANILA: Two Philippine lawmakers have called on members of the House Committee on Information and Communications Technology to probe high mobile charges on Internet use imposed by several network providers in the country.
In House Resolution 400, they were quoted as saying by Manila Times that the Philippines “is plagued with having slow yet expensive Internet which is one of the slowest in Asia.”
As compared to other Asian countries, the Philippines only has a reported average speed of 2.8 megabit per second (Mbps) while Singapore enjoys 134.5 Mbps, the report said.
Also in a report made by OpenSignal, a United Kingdom-based company specializing in wireless coverage mapping, it revealed that the Philippines is ranked the seventh slowest in terms of speed of Long Term Evolution (LTE).
The House resolution reportedly said that despite poor and slow connection, mobile service providers still impose high charges, which could be high as P2,500 a month.
“As far as Pinoy pride goes, slow mobile Internet speeds are not something to be proud of and we should look into the root causes of the subpar mobile Internet services we definitely do not deserve,” AKO Bicol party-list group Rep. Rodel Batocabe reportedly said.
“The Philippines is on the top of the list of the countries where mobile Internet connection is most expensive, and there is something very wrong when you pay a premium for inadequate results,” he added.
“We need a legislative investigation of charges imposed by the existing telecommunication companies to allow us to legislate measures that will give Filipinos the mobile Internet speeds they pay for,” the lawmaker was quoted as saying by Manila Times.
“The United Nations Human Rights Council recently passed a resolution condemning unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online, and we want our government to do its best to allow the flow of information online, especially in a digitally-reliant society we have evolved into,” according to Rep. Alfredo Garbin, who also represents the same party-list group.
