Work on the 2018 national budget has begun among agencies, with all requests bundled together in one proposed spending bill that Pres. Rodrigo Duterte will send to Congress by July.
In previous committee hearings, Sen. Paolo Benigno ?Bam? Aquino said it was determined by various stakeholders that more players are needed to improve Internet service while keeping prices reasonable.
The move is meant to address the persistent complaints from subscribers on slow Internet speed because of the lack of cellsites in the country. Compared to Vietnam which have 40,000 cell towers, the Philippines has on 7,000 cellsites.
Tarlac representative Victor Yap introduced an amendment to the bill mandating the required minimum Internet speed of 10 Mbps, saying it will be useless if connection will be slow.
The local office of tech behemoth IBM is pulling out all the stops to preach the virtues of "blockchain" -- a technology, the company said, worthy of the hype as the next biggest thing after the Internet.
Along with the broadband project, Pres. Duterte also signed an executive order creating a government portal which will serve as an online one-stop-shop for government transactions.
