CNN Cites Asia Foundation Report on Internet Access in the Philippines

CNN Philippines cites The Asia Foundation’s Improving Internet Access in the Philippines in an article assessing how the COVID-19 crisis and internet accessibility is disproportionally affecting the productivity of underserved communities.

Since then, government and non-government organizations have cooperated to push for policy reforms to narrow the divide, including the reclassification of satellite technology as a ‘value-added service’ instead of a ‘basic telecommunications service’ in the Free Public Wi-Fi Bill (now the Free Internet Access in Public Spaces Act). The idea, in a 2019 report by the Asia Foundation, was that reclassifying satellite technology would help foster competition (in light of the existing duopoly), allowing small players, and not just those with telecommunications franchises, to improve access to rural areas. The reform attempted to hurdle long standing roadblocks: legal and regulatory barriers that only allowed big companies to provide, and dictate, which areas had internet access, what kind of access do they have, and how they should have that access.