Most of us already know that telcos proposed a daily bandwidth cap on their broadband service to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) which was initially approved. This resulted to a lot of furor from the public and prompted NTC to hold an open forum at their headquarters last January 11 which was well attended by the public.
And the result of the hearing? The provision on broadband internet data cap has been discarded from the draft circular. Hats off to NTC for doing the right thing. NTC said that by putting a limit on broadband internet will only restrict the growth of industries that heavily rely on it.
So what happens next? Are we back to square one? Where some people could enjoy limitless high-speed downloading while some people suffer with dial-up speeds? Or will it really matter if telcos can just hide behind the thing called “œFair Use Policy” and thus impose restriction to users who would allegedly abuse the connection. I’m not sure if the daily cap on mobile broadband will simply go away.
NTC declared that it would now focus on ensuring the improvement of services delivered to internet users. I hope this means imposing an infrastructure upgrade to telcos to accommodate the growing number of internet subscribers. I really hope so although I’m not so sure it will be easy for the telcos to just give in.
We know that the major offenders of resource hogging are those who downloads pirated materials via torrent and this is why the bandwidth cap was proposed in the first place. So what can be done now that’s out of the plate? Do you think law enforcement needs to be involved here like what’s done in other countries?
Do share your thoughts and/or suggestions on a possible next move.
Related reading:
- Broadband data cap a “˜big blow’ to local IT firms, startups
- NTC junks proposed cap on Internet downloads