Engineer Benjamin ‘Benjie’ Tan, the first man who linked the Philippines to the internet, passed away at the age of 60 on December 26.
Tan’s cause of death was said to be lymphoma, a type of blood cancer that develops from lymphocytes or white blood cells.
He has been going back to the hospital thrice this year for pneumonia and radiotherapy to treat the lymph node mass that developed in his abdomen.
Tan was the person behind the installation of the Cisco router which allowed the country to connect to the Internet in March 1994, technology news site, Newsbyte.ph reported.
According to fellow Xavier School alumnus Edison Ong, the engineer was trying to recover so he can go back to Porac, Pampanga and fix the Wi-Fi antenna for the Aeta community in the area.
Tan began his internet breakthrough when he was assigned with setting up the router at the PLDT main office in Makati City when he was still working for a local dealer of networking gears named ComNet in 1994.
Meanwhile, another famous personality who succumbed to lymphoma this December was Cesar Apolinario, a GMA news reporter and director.