Thursday, April 12, 2007 Toral: Internet connection: a right or privilege? By Janette Toral Digital Filipino
BEFORE taking the Holy Week break, I got a digital subscriber line (DSL) connection for our home. I figured that it will be more affordable and practical rather than subscribing to the more popular mobile Internet connection nowadays.
To my surprise, the installation process happened so quickly. With the installation of one small black box plugged to the phone line, we were up and running. Best of all, the bill is just tied in to the phone service charges.
Our Internet connection these days can now be considered as competitive with our neighbor countries, such as Thailand. I hope more efforts can be done so that Internet stations can be made available in malls, through phone booths, for quick e-mail without necessarily going to the Internet café.
This is especially true for cities like Manila where you could hardly find free wireless Internet available. In fact, cities like Cagayan de Oro and Davao are more progressive or even generous in providing free Internet services to its customers.
While I was in Adelaide, Australia for the past 10 days, I was amazed to find free Internet services available in public libraries.
Perhaps, our local libraries should consider offering such services to get more Filipinos to go to libraries to do research, read books, and surf the Internet at the same time.
As far as airports are concerned, you can find free Internet services in Kuala Lumpur and there is a free wireless Internet connection as well. So, waiting for your boarding schedule does not need to be boring after all.
I guess my point in this column is that we need to be progressive in evaluating the usefulness of the Internet and we should start making it more accessible to people.
Being restrictive is also dampening its adoption by more Filipinos. Do we see providing Internet access to Filipinos a right that effort must be taken to make it accessible and affordable to as many as possible? Or do we still see it a privilege that only those who can afford should be entitled to use it?
I remember there was a time, a few years back, when we were debating on the carrier’s pricing scheme for text messaging.
The argument zoomed in on making text messaging as pervasive as possible, as some see it already as a right and not just a privilege by paying mobile phone subscribers.
In Australia, I’ve seen how parties now include wiring or connecting the country through high speed Internet as a party agenda or program. I do hope that the coming elections will also allow us to see the perspective and vision of our future leaders with regard to the country’s Internet infrastructure. Do your local politicians see the Internet connectivity of their constituents as a right and will strive to make it accessible to as many Filipinos as possible?
