AS IT launches its latest educational program, Smart Communications Inc. bared that its parent company—Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT)—has increased its capital expenditure (capex) budget for this year.
Smart and PLDT public affairs chief Ramon Isberto said the capex increase to P28.5 billion from P25.4 billion was meant to “support higher-than-expected” wireless and broadband subscriber growth and accelerated investments in wireless broadband capacity.
The trend of increasing Internet use in the country indicates that Filipinos—even students in public schools in remote areas—are ready to take advantage of information and communication technology (ICT) to further their knowledge, said Isberto.
This is why, he said, Smart is “very optimistic” that many schools in the country—government-owned or privately run institutions—will participate in “Doon Po Sa Amin (In Our Place),” a four-year online user content generation project that encourages teachers and students to utilize computer and Internet technologies in producing and sharing web-based information and educational materials about their communities.
Isberto was in Cebu last Tuesday to provide a briefing on the “Doon Po Sa Amin” project. As of last Tuesday, six schools from Central Visayas—five from Cebu Province and one from Tagbilaran City, Bohol—have registered to participate in the program.
These schools are the Catmon National High School, Mandaue City National High School, Medellin National Science and Technical School, Moalboal National High School, Puertobello National High School in Camotes (Cebu), the Science and Technology Education Center in Lapu-Lapu City and the Tagbilaran City National High School in Bohol.
Infrastructure
Isberto’s presentation showed that 64 percent or P18.3 billion of the 2008 capex will be in wireless broadband infrastructure while 31 percent or P8.8 billion will be in fixed line network.
Actual capex in the first half of the year, though, amounted to only P8.7 billion, lower by P1.3 billion compared to the first six months of 2007.
Smart media relations officer Wo Rosete said actual capex for the first half of this year is lower than 2007’s because recent investments are more on enhancements of the infrastructure network, whose initial rollout ate up most of the budget in the past years.
Isberto said that depending on the state of the economy, PLDT and Smart intend to duplicate cellular coverage growth in broadband Internet access in the next three to four years. This means PLDT and Smart hope to expand broadband coverage access to 99 percent of the country’s population.
“Wherever there is cellular coverage, you will have broadband Internet access,” he said.
He said more Filipinos are expected to access the Internet as broadband coverage becomes wider and with the decreasing prices of personal computers (PCs), laptops and netbooks.
According to data presented by Intel Philippines country manager Ricky Banaag in an earlier press briefing, there were 4.9 million Internet users in the country in 2007 and one million total broadband subscribers (all broadband service providers).
During the PLDT annual stockholders’ meeting in June this year, PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said he expects the combined subscriber base for broadband of PLDT and Smart to grow to one million from the present 600,000 by the end of the year.
Isberto noted that more than half of Filipino Internet users in the country access the World Wide Web through Internet cafés.
Even if this was the case, he said Filipinos top the list for their participation in online social networking sites.
Citing data from the International Social Media Research Wave, he said, 83.1 percent of Filipino Internet users participate in social networking sites, like Friendster, Multiply and Facebook.
The same data also reveals that Filipinos are number one in uploading photos (86.4 percent of Filipino Internet users) online and second only to Brazil in sharing videos.
Isberto said the concept of Doon Po Sa Amin is similar to uploading videos or photos online—participating schools will have to choose an interesting aspect or story, whether related to language, culture, livelihood, science and the environment, among others—that is unique to their community, develop this into web content format and post it online.
The project includes an online competition; the school with the most interesting story will be picked as winner—web-related trainings for teachers, online promotions and an incentive program.
Doon Po Sa Amin is one of the projects under the Smart Schools Program, the mobile company’s flagship community service in education.
Nationwide, the Doon Po Sa Amin Learning Challenge—the online competition component—has attracted more than 350 student groups from 83 Smart Schools partners. Registration for the learning challenge has come to a close and winners will be announced in March 2009.
Aside from Doon Po Sa Amin, Smart is also promoting the Smart Schools Online Associate and Contributor concept for institutions that are not Smart partners but want to access the program’s online learning materials. Schools that register as associates can avail themselves of Smart’s free website hosting and other programs. (LAP)
