THE Management Information and Computer System (MICS) of the Cebu City Government has allocated a P80 million budget to boost the cellphone signals and mobile data in all 80 barangays in the city.
City Councilor Edgardo "Jaypee" Labella II, chairman of the Committee on Information and Communications Technology, said the move will fix the wi-fi dead spots all over the city, especially in the mountain barangays, and will help improve the economic activities, education and job-generating projects of the city in line with Mayor Michael Rama’s vision for the city to become like Singapore.
The budget will be used to acquire Next Generation Network (NGN) that will be installed by MICS near the barangay halls.
According to Wikipedia, the general idea behind the NGN is that one network transports all information and services (voice, data, and all sorts of media such as video) by encapsulating these into IP (Internet Protocol) packets.
Labella said many will benefit from the project since the wi-fi signal can reach up to 100 kilometer radius.
"As we noticed, inig adto nato sa mga mountain barangays daghan og mga dead spots. Importante man gud labi na kon adunay disaster mahitabo ang atoang disaster management personnel dali ra makakontak sa barangay and vice versa," Labella said.
(We noticed that there are many dead spots in the mountain barangays. This (wi-fi signal) is important so that our disaster management personnel can easily contact the barangay in the event of disaster).
In Cebu City north district, there are portions in the mountain barangays of Paril, Mabini, Agsungot, Lusaran, Tagbao, Tabunan, Pung-ol, Sinsin, Adlaon, Sirao, Taptap and adjacent areas that have no signal.
Labella said they city government is expected to start the project on the second quarter of this year after the conduct of the public bidding possibly in the next few weeks or months.
Labella said they will prioritize the wi-fi installation in the mountain barangays before going to the lowland areas.
The project is expected to be completed in 18 months. (PAC, TPT)