In a briefing on Tuesday, DOTC Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III said that for all the criticism of the NBN project, its modernizing impact on the bureaucracy would put the country in a better position to compete with other ASEAN economies like those of Malaysia and Vietnam.
As it is, the Philippines has been left behind in the race to establish an “e-government” and further delays in the implementation of the NBN would surely leave the country in the dust, he said.
“From a technological standpoint, the NBN is badly needed. It is urgent. The countries we’re competing with are starting to roll out their own broadband networks. For the Philippines to be competitive, we have to put in the right technology,” said Formoso.
He said Malaysia and Vietnam have been preparing their broadband network roll-outs in 2007, with Kuala Lumpur laying out a capital outlay of $1 billion.
Even Burma and Cambodia, countries generally considered “backward” compared to the Philippines, are already contemplating implementing their own broadband networks to modernize government systems, according to Formoso.
An e-government, as defined by multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, refers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by government agencies to enable more efficient and cost-effective government as well as allow greater public access to information.
Formoso said the primary purpose of putting up the NBN would be to “provide connectivity down to the village level.”
As an example, once the pipeline is completed, satellite offices of the National Statistics Office in the provinces would be able to exchange documents and communicate seamlessly with the NSO main office in Manila to refer to important documents without delay.
Formoso said the government had the capability to roll out the NBN project in the next three years, as it would only need to refurbish and utilize the existing telecommunications facilities of government to create this broadband network.
He said there would be no danger of the project becoming a “white elephant” as the DOTC had the capacity to maintain the system upon the departure of its Chinese partner.
“Remember that the DOTC, notwithstanding a limited budget, has been running the telephone system of this country since the time when no private firm wanted to undertake it. We are all the more capable of handling it now since the newer system [for the NBN] will be easier to maintain and operate because of newer technology,” said Formoso.
The government recently announced plans to build two state-owned IT backbones, at a cost of $800 million, to create a cyber corridor in the country. One of the projects is the $329-million NBN while the other is a $460-million plan to build a satellite-based IT backbone for the cyber education program of the education department.
Both would make use of Chinese technology and financing.
The University of the Philippines School of Economics, in a recent paper, opposed the proposed cyber corridor project, arguing that it was unnecessary and a waste of funds.
The study, authored by economics professors Raul V. Fabella and Emmanuel S. de Dios, pointed out, among other things, the lack of a feasibility study behind the project despite claims of urgency to build the broadband backbone.
It said the government was embarking on a project to provide a broadband “highway” when most of the final users, the government offices in remote provinces, had yet to get computers to serve as their “vehicles” to travel the cyber highway.
But Formoso said the UP paper on the NBN project did not look into the details of the NBN project enough to criticize it.
What it did was quote news items about the NBN project and did not really study the nitty-gritty of the project, he said.
“To me, it was just an opinion piece,” said Formoso.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Beverly T. Natividad
Quelle/Source: Inquirer, 21.08.2007
