NTC Allows ISPs to Cap Internet Service

In a bizarre move to potentially improve the internet service in the country, the National Telecommunications Commission has allowed the Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the country to cap their service through a revised Memorandum Order on Minimum Speed of Broadband Connection. For starters, this will just cap the amount of daily volume a subscriber gets. This means goodbye to your unlimited surfing and downloads.

I find it quite disturbing for NTC to even have thought of this idea to improve the service. Yes, everyone’s aware of the false advertising that all ISPs are doing. Yes, everyone’s aware of the generally poor service that most ISPs in the country are giving. But how in their right minds would they have thought of this as a solution?

Wouldn’t it be logical to first look into addressing these false advertisements? People won't complain if their expectations were set properly. Wouldn’t it be better to check first if these ISPs are promising their subscribers something they wouldn’t even get? Wouldn’t it be better had NTC try to use a bit of their brains first before even coming out with this outrageous solution?

Can they not conduct a simple root cause analysis on why they are getting a lot of complaints about the poor quality of service from these ISPs? Even an idiot would have noticed that in a slum area in one of the major cities in Metro Manila, where there are only 2 Smart Base Stations, literally hundreds of households are sharing the connection. A few phone calls to Smart Technical Support would let you know that the base station where you are connected is already congested and you will just need to wait because a supposed upgrade is already underway. In the first place, selling these services to new subscribers should have been halted had they known that their infrastructure won’t be able to handle any additional subscribers without taking a hit on their service quality.

Internet connection is now deemed as a commodity much like electricity, water and food. Have you ever heard of water service being stopped because your household already reached the allowable number of kilowatt per household? Or probably, you can no longer take your bath because your household already reached the allowable cubic meters per household. In Japan, 5MBps of connection costs around P750. Way off from the current rate and current bandwidth that we’re getting. People would now be complaining “Hoy!!! Magtipid naman kayo ng kilobyte!!!”

The bigger picture here is the inability of NTC from becoming an intelligent thinker. I can’t see this as a step forward towards progress but a huge leap back to the dial-up connection days. One can’t help but wonder if some big ISPs have bought their way into having NTC implement this.