The Philippine Online Chronicles

The thunderous clap of rapid guns blazing raged between your ears.  Boom!  Boom!  Boom! Go grenades exploding everywhere!  This was Counter-Strike.

"Damn it," one guy sitting in a terminal muttered as a snippet got him.  He was engrossed in playing make believe as a member of Special Forces.

From two terminals down this rather lengthy row computers, a girl was animatedly talking.  The woman on screen looked like her mother.  They were engrossed video chatting.  On another station, one girl, who couldn't be more than 15 years old was logged on to Facebook.  Sitting beside that girl was a boy who was laughing out loud at a YouTube video.

It is a typical day at an Internet cafe. Why shouldn't it be?  According to Yahoo-Nielsen, 69 percent of Filipinos accessing the Internet is through Internet cafes.

Sorry state of bandwidth

This is the sorry state of the Internet in the Philippines.  The way it is accessed has barely changed in the sixteen years since the Philippines got connected with the rest of the world.

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The Global Information Technology 2009-2010 report ranks the Philippines at 85 out of 133 countries.  Internet bandwidth (Mb/s) per 10,000 population; 2007 is listed at 1.1.

How about some context to that statistic?

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Thailand is ranked 47, and Internet bandwidth per 10,000 population is at 8.6.

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Vietnam is ranked 54 out of 133 economies, and Internet bandwidth (Mb/s) per 10,000 population is pegged at 5.7.

On the ground Internet service providers have been slow to provide bandwidth at reasonable rates, though technologically capable.  Globe WiMax for example has uncapped real world speed pegged at 8Mb/s, but consumers are only offered 1Mb/s.

These statistics conform to the World Bank assessment that the private sector in the Philippines does not find it convenient to expand as it expects little in return.

The rise of mobile Internet

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More people are accessing the Internet from home.  This is driven by the upper social classes.

The most startling statistic to note in Yahoo-Nielsen's report though is the growth of mobile Internet. In a year it grew from insignificance to 5 percent.  Sure, 5 percent is still a low number, but impressive since it was none-existent in 2009.  Young adults ages 20 to 39 are the predominant users of mobile Internet.

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Search, according to Yahoo is the number one activity in the Philippines and the most sought after information is for entertainment (62 percent), video content (52 percent), followed by documents for research (44 percent) and lastly audio content (31 percent).  Search is king trend is driven by young adults.

Influence of Blog and News

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According to Yahoo-Nielsen, “Social Networking (53%) is the most popular social media activity followed by user-generated content (30%).  Blogging (7%) and forums (11%) are least popular.”  The study further revealed that social networking used to keep in touch with family and friends, send email and chat.

Blog and News are at the bottom of people’s online activities.  This is a frightening statistic.  It shows that Filipinos are into the gated web.  This in spite of when active internet universe are questioned, "what activities would they do ", 90 percent replied positively to reading blogs:

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Putting it in context:

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Mccan's corroborates the impact of blogs with what Yahoo-Nielsen is seeing.

So, “are we a blogging nation?”

During the recently concluded Presidential campaign, a question was asked which was the most influential source of information in choosing a President.  In the closing address of New Media and Democracy: 5^th Forum of Emerging Leaders, Manolo Quezon took notice of this statistic.   Television accounted for 63 percent while national radio at 2 percent, and Internet at 0.2 percent.

Can we conclude that these data points lead us to conclude a sad realization that the Filipino is not a reading population?

On the one hand Yahoo-Nielsen’s findings conform with what Universal McCanns discovered in their Wave 3 social media tracker:

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Notice the portion on blog?  Those who are not frequent users, tend not to read blogs so much.

How many Filipinos online?

The number of actual Filipinos on the Internet varies depending who you talk to.

For Yahoo-Nielsen, their criteria remained the same from their previous study because so long as you logged on at least once in the past month, you were an Internet user.  As in the previous year, they focused on urban areas.  For Yahoo-Nielsen the number of Internet users in the Philippines is a staggering 30 million people where ages 10 to 39 are the predominant users and that is approximately 10 million shy of the number of voters who participated in the 2010 national elections in the Philippines.

Another benchmark is Alexa stats.  There are currently 14 million Filipino Facebook users, according to Jim Ayson and he noted that Facebook unique visits from the Philippines are pegged at 9 million.  Facebook is the number one site visited from the Philippines.  A reasonable assumption would then be that daily users of the Internet in the Philippines would be in the 9 to 12 million range, as per Facebook uniques.

We can assume, yet so far, nothing has been more specific.  No one really knows how many people use the Internet daily, or at least as frequently as twice a week.

Threats

What are threats brewing on the horizon?

OMG OMB

If the sorry state of bandwidth in the Philippines is bad enough, the past decade has also seen the rise of greater and foolish government encroachment on Internet and information technology in general.

On such action is the pursuit of the Optical Media Board to have hard drives registered:

A local blog reports (and sports a valuable comment) that the Optical Media Board (OMB) pursues registration of hard disks for possible prevention of direct Internet downloads of unlicensed content. In the blog post, Atty. Cyrus Paul Valenzuela, OIC-Executive Director of the OMB confirms that they can also be responsible for monitoring hard drive activities for they are “magnetic mediums falling under the jurisdiction of the OMB”.

This is a mistake and foolhardy task.  The solution to fighting illegal content has already been solved.  It is the iTunes solution.

Make content easily accessible and affordable to the masses and they will forego such patchwork solutions such as Limewire.  They will ignore the badly burned DVDs on the sidewalk.  In fact, one of the reasons why Bitttorrent remains the domain of the technologically savvy is that it is difficult to use.

Detrimental content licensing is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to digitizing anything.  This isn’t simply a Philippine problem it is an economic problem that spans the world.    Pandora for example limits streaming to the United States and Hulu too for the same reason as content licensing.

The proposed NTC taxation on online activities

In December 2008, the National Telecommunications Commission made public a proposed memorandum with the title, “Guidelines on the provision of contents, information, applications, and electronic games.”

(At the time of this writing, the page seems to no longer exist, but a Google cache does.  I took the liberty of committing the cache to PDF.)

The said memorandum recognized that government must promote “a fair, efficient and responsive market to stimulate growth and development of the telecommunications facilities and services.”

Yet, this memorandum had it gone through would do exactly the opposite.  In fact, it is a thinly veiled taxation:

“Contents, Information, Applications and/or Electronic Games Providers, Contents Developers, Information Sources, Applications Developers, and Electronic Games Developers are required to have commercial presence in the country and shall secure Certificate of Registration (COR) from the Commission.”

What is this COR? Simply:

The following fees and charges shall be imposed:

a.  Filing Fee                         :  PhP   300.00

b.  Annual Registration Fee :         6,000.00

c.  Surcharge for late       :    50% of the annual registration fee if application filing of application is filed within six (6) months   from date of expiry for renewal  100% if filed after six (6) months from date of expiry

Beyond simply being thinly veiled taxation, the philosophical and economic implications of such action had it been finalized would have been detrimental to further economic growth, not to mention sets cultural precedent.  The raison d’être for such action is hardly motivated by philosophy or insidiousness.  It is simply that government is unable to efficiently collect taxes and lacking revenue, cannot sustain economic growth much less invest at GDP levels.   Yet the resulting activity is very invasive.

Consumer privacy and rights

If government is a threat, there exist too on the horizon is a threat to consumer privacy and rights.  Arthur Policarpio, IMMAP President’s keynote during Mobile Marketing Association launch of Philippines Local Council talked about the mobile landscape.  He sees market potential especially in mobile Internet, mobile marketing, and mobile applications.[i] In the same keynote, he was mentioned that a barrier for increased adoption is abuse of consumer privacy and rights.[ii]

Computer as a toy

If it wasn’t bad enough there is also a great cultural problem existing, a great digital divide if you will.  The Computer and the Internet remain a mystery to the Filipino.  It creates a digital divide of those who understand the technology for what it is, and those who either don’t or muddle through it like herd.  Many Filipinos for example, which isn’t exclusive to a certain demographic, see the computer as a glorified toy, and as an entertainment device.  People who do see the computer and the Internet as more than a toy, as more than an entertainment device is too few and far in between.

The Facebook hegemony

Facebook is the gated web and Filipinos feel comfortable in it. It is the Forum, it is the blog, it is email, it is chat, it is the photo album and it is the game center.  It is a nice gated place on the Internet.  The threat is about being satisfied that this is the web for me.  It is a sad reality that there is a wider, grander, World Wide Web which is rich in knowledge, ripe in culture that flourishes.

Would the Art of Curation fit in all this?  Do these threats then make the Filipino the bewildered herd?  And if so, how then do we unshackle those bonds that bind?

The economic benefit of broadband

The past decade has seen growth in broadband across the world.   William Lehr, Carlos Osorio, Sharon Gillertt from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Marvin Sirbu of Carnegie Mellon University wrote on “Measuring Broadband’s Economic Impact:”

“For the first time, we can say unequivocally that broadband access does matter to the economy, just as common sense suggests it should.  We estimate that between 1998 and 2002, communities in which mass-market broadband was available by December 1999 experienced more rapid growth in employment, the number of businesses overall, and businesses in IT-intensive sectors.  In addition, the effect of broadband availability by 1999 can be observed in higher market rates for rental housing in 2000.”

There are other studies of course.

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) published “Broadband and the Economy.”  It was based on the ministerial Meeting on the future of the Internet economy held in South Korea between 17^th and 18^th of June 2008.  The Korea Communications Commission hosted it.

It noted these things.  That broadband is important for enabling technology.  It has a huge impact on productivity and that the largest productivity gains come from use, rather than the production of ICTs.   For example:

Oracle has implemented a system allowing employees to file expense reports online, cutting costs by USD 15 per filing (from USD 25 to USD 10); IBM has implemented an Internet-based tool for booking employee travel with reported monthly savings of USD 2.5 million; and Cisco reportedly saves some USD 360 million per year by using the Internet for e-business (Atkinson and McKay, 2007).

OECD had a few things to say about how government can maximize the economic growth of broadband:

“Government‘s role in maximising the economic benefits of broadband is multiple. Governments not only help create the macroeconomic framework conditions for a favourable innovation and investment climate, but they also play an important role as regulators, standards makers, infrastructure providers, customers, and in research. Government funded basic research has often led to the development of ICT- related innovations, including TCP/IP, the web and the browser. Governments are now at the forefront of grid applications in research and in applying Web 2.0 to science as well as being major funders of basic research.”

What happens in a nation like the Philippines where everything is nascent?

The Global Information and Communication Technologies (GICT) Department of the World Bank published in January 2010, “Building broadband: Strategies and policies for the developing world” by Yongsoo Kim, Tim Kelly, and Siddhartha Raja. Their work is another paper that agrees that broadband has positive impact in society.  Further, the paper defines Broadband as an Ecosystem where the network, the services and applications and the users are all part of the processes.  The paper suggests:

1. 1. Be visionary, yet flexible to change given market conditions;
   2. Use competition to promote market growth;
   3. Facilitate demand.

The study also identified the following:

The World Bank has found that in low- and middle-income countries every 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration accelerates economic growth by 1.38 percentage points—more than in high-income countries and more than for other telecommunications services (Figure 1).16 In a similar study, McKinsey & Company estimates that ―a 10 percent increase in broadband household penetration delivers a boost to a country‘s GDP that ranges from 0.1 percent to 1.4 percent.‖17 Booz & Company found that ―10 percent higher broadband penetration in a specific year is correlated to 1.5 percent greater labor productivity growth over the following five years.‖ Booz also suggests that ―countries in the top tier of broadband penetration have exhibited 2 percent higher GDP growth than countries in the bottom tier.‖18 These studies are the latest in the already extensive work estimating broadband‘s economic impact.19

In May 2010, Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica wrote, “Cellular networks a key to getting developing world online:”

"Countries also need to take advantage of wireless technologies to deliver high-speed Internet access and launch 3G networks, where they are not yet available," reads the report. "To this end, policy-makers also need to monitor the percentage of the population within reach of a 3G mobile cellular signal."

The ITU places this responsibility in the hands of policymakers, urging them to continue developing Internet-literate societies and to make local content in local languages more widely available online. "The development of user-friendly and affordable [Internet Communication Technology] applications, geared to citizens and local communities, is critical for increasing Internet use and building an inclusive information society," wrote the ITU.

You can read the 2010 World Telecommunications/ICT Development report if you click here (PDF format).

Tip of the iceberg

All these studies point out that developing broadband and ICT is a step in the right direction.  It takes a concerted effort between private and public sectors.  Internet has become part of the necessary infrastructure just as roads; electricity and water are essential infrastructure to a nation’s economy.

The Philippines is sort of in the right direction.  That’s one of the key things going on here. As Yahoo-Nielsen pointed out, great pricing has allowed an explosion in mobile Internet.  That must continue and just like cellular technology has made the Philippines one of the biggest markets in SMS, so too would mobile technology be the infrastructure to deliver Internet, everywhere.   The private sector laying down the infrastructure for that part is a step in the right direction.

Building the backbone is one thing, having devices to connect to this broader network is already there.  Already, netbooks are becoming mainstay, in fact they’re even more bang for the buck than desktops.  Mobile phones are being introduced to take advantage of wifi and 3G networks and these devices are being brought to an affordable level.

This adaptation of mobile and personal mobile devices is right there on the trend-taking place on the global stage.  That’s the potential to ride on, to take advantage of the crest as it happens.

Training is needed

As it happens, one of the challenge facing society is not just technological and economic, but cultural as well.  There comes a need where training needs to take place to turn this ignorance into something positive, which means more and more graduates need to be trained in how to code for the network, to take advantage of apps.

Courses need to adapt for example.  In Pinoy TechPodcast, episode 4, “The Internet in the Philippines,” the round table discussion touched on that. Some people didn’t have a computer at home and it was their first time using a computer.  There is a huge disconnect.  Programming languages are being taught old-style, while what’s happening in the industry is different.  Perhaps it is how one teaches computer science then?

It further reinforces the startling truth that there needs to be an introduction for most Filipinos that there is a greater world beyond Facebook.  That video editing could be fun.  That taking pictures is great, and photo editing has its challenge too.  Writing a blog and building one is a fun and exciting way to do it, especially if one knows how to code.  That creating games is just as fun as playing them and that there is this wonderment at sketching characters and making them come to life.

That’s part of the cultural transformation that needs to transform society.

Internet Freedom is the Freedom to Connect

Given the challenges of things like the Optical Media Board’s campaign to have hard drives registered and given the push of the NTC to establish new regulation, was philosophically and economically wrong, and in light of the Internet and the transformation it is powering Social Media, there must be a concentrated effort to firmly codify in the Philippines, Internet Freedom.

In a presentation before TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design), Clay Skirky talked about how social media can make history and how social media is transforming the way we communicate and that this moment we are living through is the single, largest increase in expressive capability in human history.[iii] An interesting point he makes is this:

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“What matters here isn’t technical capital, it’s social capital.  These tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technically boring.  It isn’t when the shiny new tools show up that their uses start permeating society.  It’s when everybody is able to take them for granted.”[iv]

United States Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton on January 21, 2010 gave Remarks on Internet Freedom simplifies this thought by turning it into a Human right:

“The freedom to connect – the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace. It allows individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate. Once you’re on the internet, you don’t need to be a tycoon or a rock star to have a huge impact on society.”

What Mrs. Clinton spoke of is something that resonates from the very beginning of the Internet, from the mother of all demos, to the beginnings of today’s Technology moguls as they gathered at homebrew computer club, from the hacker culture at MIT, to the laying down of the first web server, and in anarchy we trust.  It comes to us from the success and failure of Linux.  It is why we ask ourselves, “Are we a blogging nation?”  In the same way we explore the art of curation.  It comes to us this day, as people gather on the web, as people participate on forums, creating videos on YouTube and sharing their 140 character thoughts on twitter.  It is the hacker ethic.

This Internet Freedom comes hand in hand with the nuts and bolts of Net Neutrality.

Any guarantee to establish the Freedom to Connect must be based on a core philosophy of nondiscrimination of services:[v]

A. Freedom to Access Content of their Choice

What this means is that people have the right to be able to open any website, any forum, and run any service on the Internet and no government or Internet Service Provider (ISP) will have the right to censor or regulate what the citizen sees fit to open.

A user could view porn--- certainly people have different ideas of what one should be able to access.  ISPs are not the point where users ought to block such access; that choice ought to fall to the consumer.  The prosumer or the user has a wireless router that could be set to block content he or she prefers not to allow.

B. Freedom to Run Applications of their Choice

This means that as a paying customer to an Internet service, that customer must be allowed to run his own webserver for example.  He is allowed to run bittorrent file sharing applications.  No ISP, not even the Telecommunications Company or government can tell him not to run any piece of software he wants to.

Today, there are ISPs who disable access to ports for its consumers.  Blocking ports mean that Consumers can’t host their own secure server.  Certainly, only the technology savvy would avail of these services but the Right to do so, should not be in the hands of ISPs, like content, it should be in the hands of the people who buy access to the network.

C. Freedom to Attach Personal Devices of their Choice

It means that the telecommunication company or the ISP cannot dictate that one of their customers can only attach a PC on their internal network to connect to the ISP.  They cannot prevent him from sharing his Internet connection with his phone’s wifi connection or a netbook.  They cannot regulate that only X device can be used and not Y device.  So long as the consumer pays for the service that’s the extent of their agreement.

D. Freedom to have Online Privacy

This means that no one should be eavesdropping on a user’s connection, his Internet transaction, his email and instant messenger conversation or for that matter his banking transaction for the most part, it also means that people have a right to be anonymous online.

Privacy is also defined as making sure the user--- the prosumer is the only one who determines what he or she permits to share to the rest of the world.

Freedom to have Reliable and Fast Internet

As explained by the multiple studies presented, reliable, fast, broadband speeds is an infrastructure assurance that government must address in concert with the private sector.  As Yahoo-Nielsen study pointed out, the low tariffs imposed on mobile Internet has resulted in an explosion in its adaptation.  From nothing in 2009 survey, to 5 percent in a year, which one could say is fantastic.

Can the Internet and Information and Communications Technology help?

Going back to Mrs. Clinton’s remarks on Internet Freedom she spoke of how important Information Networks are as rescuers were able to save a girl in Haiti who was trapped under the rubble of a supermarket.  Rescue reached that trapped little girl because she was able to send a text message calling for help.

In Iran, the people there had to fight tooth and nail to get words of atrocities across the world.

During Ondoy, our people communicated through the existing communications network already established.

When the 2010 campaign arrived, though it did little impact, discussion raged across cyberspace and the online world became a theater of war.

As a nation seek to create more jobs at home, everything is tied to the Internet.  A device unconnected to the World Wide Web is either a glorified typewriter or a brick.

That’s not even the end of it. In Why iPad, we talked about the computer as an appliance.  We talked how this one device is revolutionizing publishing.  We talked exactly that in Marvel iPhone and iPad App is future of comic books.

What good are devices like iPad which promises to be the first of many, if a doctor in Davao couldn’t consult with a specialist in Manila, and another doctor in Cebu can’t help monitor his patient who is in Cagayan de Oro?  Granted, much of the Philippines is still years, if not decades away from very real time health care, it would be nice to start laying down the foundation for it.

A pre-requisite for a successful nation in the 21^st century includes the Internet and broadband.

We know with reasonable expectation that in the coming years, there is going to be a continued explosion in mobile use and there are many advantages to ensuring that Filipinos have the right foot forward to take advantage of it.  It was Yahoo-Nielsen’s statistic that said when private initiative reduced tariffs, it saw rise in mobile Internet usage and this only strengthens the assertion that private enterprise must find reasons to invest at GDP levels or Government finds a reason for it to do so.  This fact also adds to the conjecture that to take advantage of the economic growth potential offered by broadband and the Internet, then it must be a concerted effort between Government and private enterprise.

Does it start then with stimulating a Filipino software industry?  Does it begin by a refocusing of education, creating well-rounded individuals?  Does it include pushing forward for digital everything from advertising to publishing?

Amidst power crisis, more than 300 billion-peso budget deficit, and an education crisis, how can the Philippines leap ahead?  It starts by playing smart, not working hard.  As studies presented here have shown, all our tomorrows begin and end with the Internet and with broadband access that is reasonable and reliable.

The Internet is the most monumental invention in human history to date that drives market growth, as well as technological innovation.  It makes possible an unhindered social dialogue and it allows for the free flow of ideas across every discipline.  It has leveled the playing field.  It is the mechanism by which ordinary people are empowered and three things need to happen to guarantee that this Internet will be that gift of humanity for future generations of Filipinos.

Beyond the economic and the technological, the issue of the state of the Internet in the Philippines is important that it touches the social as well.  It requires of us a cultural transformation to embrace the very best of hacker ethic.  In addition to that, ensuring Internet freedom is ensuring that Filipinos continue to be part of the global community.  It ensures that we are connected in real time to real people even as such ideas are under threat elsewhere in the world even in democratic societies.  How much less in a Filipino society that doesn't understand the importance of this?  How much less in a nation such as ours, still drowning in our fears?  Therein lies a bigger challenge.

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Editor's note: this article serves as conclusion to Reflections on Openness series.

Part 1: The mother of all demos - the beginnings of hacker culture, and ethics.  It goes through a bit of history, how Unix and PCs began

Part 2: In anarchy we trust - this is the story of the Internet and the WorldWideWeb

Part 3: The success and failure of linux - why the meaning of "openness" isn't what it used to be.

Part 4: Are we a blogging nation? - a discussion on social media

Part 5: The art of curation - how do we make sense of all the data?

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How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history, by Clay Shirky via TEDtalksDirector, YouTube

Map of Internet IPv4, circa 2006 by xkcd, some rights reserved.

Pix plz, by xkcd, some rights reserved.

"i miss the Internet," by Rob Cottingham, some rights reserved.

"Sunset," by Rob Cottingham, some rights reserved.

"Duty Calls," by xkcd, some rights reserved.

Screenshots by Author

iPad, Courtesy Apple

[i] Policarpio, Arthur. “Mobile Marketing Association Launches Philippines Local Council in Partnership with IMMAP”.  Manila, August 26, 2009.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Shirky, Clay. “How Social Media Can Make History” (Video) http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

[iv] Ibid.

[v] http://www.thepoc.net/commentaries/3411.html