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Improving the effectiveness of the Philippines internet lines infrastructure
Proponents:
Datan, Jan Kyle
Kalubiran, Nick Robert
Najera, Arnold Joseph
Presented to:
Department of Engineering and Public Works
Date:
May 20, 2021
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Table of Contents
Introduction
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3
Literature Review
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5
Research questions
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7
Research design and methods………………………………………………………..
7
Research schedule
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10
References
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Introduction
1.1 Background and Context
Education is an important part of our lives. For some people, education has been taken
away from them because of this new normal, which is the online classes. The struggle to have a
stable connection and an educational environment seems to be harder to achieve. For us city
dwellers, we encounter technical problems, especially the loss of internet connection, more so for
the people who live in remote places that lack the sufficient signal it needs to run a synchronous
class.
An official of the Department of Education uttered the words “DepEd cannot address the
Internet problem. What we can do is to move on,” and proposed the idea of modular education.
Some knowledge is impossible to be attained through autodidacticism and is needed to be guided
by professors in their field of study. This research aims to improve the effectiveness of the
Philippines internet lines infrastructure to promote equal access to education.
1.2 Problem Statement
Internet providers may have been proposing upgrades to increase bandwidth and internet
speed, however, signal is a big challenge for some students. As we all know, signals in remote
places remain sluggish and insufficient. The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,640 islands and
internet access points are distributed unevenly across the country. The city is prioritized in terms
of signal distribution and the province remains disconnected.
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This research aims to attain the knowledge of the distance where internet connectivity is
stable and unstable. Furthermore, it aims to pinpoint where cell towers are needed to be placed to
widen the coverage of its signal. This also aims to grasp the struggles of the students in remote
places in terms of accessibility in signal connectivity.
1.3 Research Questions
Main Research Question: What are the variables that affect the internet connectivity in the
Philippines during online education?
Research Sub-Questions:
1. How do these variables affect the education of students in different living conditions?
2. How do we improve the state of education in the Philippines in terms of internet
accessibility?
1.4 Relevance and Importance of the Research
The Commision on Higher Education stated that the "flexible learning" system will
"continue in school year 2021 and thereafter.". For us, students, we must secure the accessibility
of our internet connectivity to further enhance the knowledge that we have. Since we are in a
pandemic, our resources are limited and we are obliged to follow flexible education, specifically
online education. This research provides knowledge on the factors and reasons why we
encounter these technical problems with our internet connections. This does not only benefit
students but also adults who work from home and use internet services to earn money.
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The internet has been integrated in our lives and serves as the foundation for
communication, business, leisure, education, and many more during this pandemic. Having the
access to this innovative technology attaches you to the present and may provide you knowledge
you never expected. The Internet serves as the future of this world.
Review of related literature
Internet in the Philippines first became available on March 29, 1994, with the Philippine
Network Foundation (PHNet) connecting the country and its people to Sprint in the United States
via a 64 kbit/s link. As of January 2020, there are 73,000,000 people using the internet in the
country, penetrating 67% of the total population.
Through a comparison of the current global ICT situation with the current situation in the
Philippines, the country's Internet infrastructure lags behind among those of contemporary
developing countries in Asia, particularly in terms of Internet connectivity. In 2015, Thailand had
an average Internet speed of 7.4 Mbps, Sri Lanka 7.4, and Malaysia 4.3. Meanwhile, the
Philippines had a meager average Internet speed of 2.8 Mbps, placing the country at 104 among
160 countries, with developed countries in Asia such as South Korea (23.6 Mbps) and Singapore
(12.9 Mbps) ranking 1 and 12, respectively.
Since last March, there has been a surge in demand for faster and better internet
connection as Filipinos resorted to digital platforms in their attempts to cope with the tough
lockdowns and the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.
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A submarine cable or an undersea cable is a complex system of wires installed either
underwater or underground that power the global internet. These wires therefore carry all the
world’s online content. The Philippines takes an important position in the business process
outsourcing (BPO) industry worldwide. Submarine networks serve as critical components to the
BPO industry, providing reliable and diverse links between the Philippines and the rest of the
world.
Since the acquisition of Digitel by PLDT in 2011 and the takeover of Bayantel by Globe
Telecom in 2013, PLDT and Globe Telecom have formed the duopoly on the international subsea
cable market in the Philippines.
In 2017, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and
the state-owned firm Bases Conversion and Development and Development Authority (BCDA)
collaborated with Facebook to land PLCN in the Philippines under the Luzon Bypass
Infrastructure (LBI) project which is a government initiative for the National Broadband Plan
(NBP), the first of its kind for the Philippine government to implement by building and operating
its own submarine cable landing stations. The BCDA builds the Luzon Bypass Infrastructure
(LBI) made up of two cable landing stations and a 250 km long cable network corridor
connecting the two cable landing stations.
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This paper aims to give solutions towards the ever-growing issue of the structural integrity,
efficiency, and effectiveness of the country’s submarine cable infrastructure. This study offers an
approach in improving Internet connectivity in the Philippines by bridging the gap between the
country’s Internet infrastructure and effectiveness and the rest of the world.
Research questions
The purpose of this research study is to improve the effectiveness of the Philippines
internet lines infrastructure for the students and adults who are undergoing online education or
work in the Philippines. At this stage in the research, the factors that affect the internet
connectivity in the Philippines during online education will be generally defined as our main
topic for this thus creating our Main research question - .What are the factors that affect the
internet connectivity in the Philippines during online education?
In accordance with our main research question, we also want to know How these
variables affect the education of students and the work of adults in different living conditions? as
well as how can we improve the state of education and work in the Philippines in terms of
internet accessibility?
Research design and methods
Research design
This study involves the variables that affect the internet connectivity in the Philippines
during online education. The research design is intended to provide an appropriate framework for
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a study. A study of this relevance will have multiple sources and information; however, the
research design process involves many interrelated decisions.
This research includes both qualitative and quantitative methods and a combination of
primary and secondary sources. The qualitative data supports the quantitative data analysis and
results. The result obtained is triangulated since the researcher utilized the qualitative and
quantitative data types in the data analysis.
Methods and Sources
This study employed mixed methods of gaining data. Surveys were given out to those
who work directly with the submarine lines, questionnaires were handed out to the general public
for their experiences and to pinpoint their problems with the current digital infrastructure,
interviews were conducted with higher-ups of major telecommunication companies. The
theoretical analysis summarized theoretical findings to identify and analyze the different
information from various sources like the internet, different websites, different books and
journals. It concerns research goals as internet usage for improvement of learning in order to
compare with empirical findings. Quantitative data analysis is an approach to conduct with our
research that analyses numerical data involves examining, categorizing, tabulating, and survey
questionnaires or recombining the collected data (Yin, 1994; Bryman, A., & Bell, E., 2011).
Thus, we have used summary of description of theoretical data into analysis with empirical data.
Data analysis is important and necessary for the processing from empirical finding and
theoretical finding to understand the results. Thus, the data analysis is necessary to conduct
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with empirical analysis and theoretical analysis. We compared our empirical findings with
theoretical findings for analyzing our research result
Practical Considerations
Making infrastructure effective in achieving its objectives requires money, land, energy,
and other resources. These costs are incurred in planning, construction, operation, maintenance,
and sometimes demolition of facilities. There are costs of using the facilities to provide services,
of monitoring and regulating the safety and environmental consequences of these activities, and
of mitigating adverse impacts of infrastructure. These costs are incurred and paid at different
times and places, by different agencies and groups (e.g., users, neighbors, taxpayers), and in non
monetary and monetary terms. The relationship of these various costs to infrastructure's
effectiveness in achieving its tasks is central to the definition of performance.
This relationship of effectiveness and costs exists in an uncertain world. In the best of
times, there are limits to the degree to which these relationships can be accurately measured and
related to one another. In the worst of times, storms, accidents, and sudden failures of materials
and equipment drastically alter these relationships. Long gestation periods and service lives
mean that costs of facilities may change and levels of usage may differ dramatically from early
expectations. Reliability—the likelihood that infrastructure effectiveness will be maintained over
an extended period of time—is another component to be monitored.
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Research schedule
Research Phase
Objectives
Deadlines/Dates
Research Planning
● Developing a research
topic
● Identifying relevant
sources
● Gathering of essential
materials
May 20, 2021 - May 25, 2021
Research on Related
Literature
● Refining the research
topic
● Reading related
articles and existing
literatures
● Writing drafts
May 26, 2021 - May 28, 2021
Data Gathering
● Implementing data
gathering methods
● Formalizing data
gathering with
essentials materials
● Conducting test
● Recording of results
May 29, 2021 - June 3, 2021
Testing and Examination
● Gather data for
analysis
● Reviewing drafts
● Extracting of results
June 4, 2021 - June 6, 2021
Conclusion
● Final Reading
● Deliver to the
department
June 7, 2021
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References
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https://mb.com.ph/2020/09/18/common-problems-that-occur-during-online-classes/
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A.R., Verona, J.A., Trafalgar-Arches, J., Lazaro, J., Balinas, E.G.M., Telan, E.F.O., Roy,
L., Galon, M., Florida, C.H.N., Ukawa,T., Villanueva, A.M.G., Saito, N., Nepomuceno,
J.R., … & Solante, R.M. (2020, April 14). First COVID-19 infections in the Philippines:
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7154063/
Hernando-Malipot M. (2020, October 6). Internet connection problems beyond our control —
DepEd. Manila Bulletin.
https://mb.com.ph/2020/10/06/internet-connection-problems-beyond-our-control-deped/
Infrastructure Performance and its Measurement." National Research Council. 1996. Measuring
and Improving Infrastructure Performance. Washington, DC: The National Academies
Press. doi: 10.17226/4929. https://www.nap.edu/read/4929/chapter/4#35
Liay, L. C. (2019, August 28). Philippines: Capturing the broadband satellite opportunity. The
Asia Foundation.
https://asiafoundation.org/2019/08/28/philippines-capturing-the-broadband-satellite-oppo
rtunity/
Madarang, C. R. S. (2020, September 24). A look at the world’s submarine cable systems that
power the internet, including connectivity in Philippines. Philstar.
https://interaksyon.philstar.com/hobbies-interests/2020/09/24/177563/a-look-at-the-world
s-submarine-cable-systems-that-power-the-internet-including-connectivity-in-philippines/
Magsambol, B. (2021, May 22). CHED: There’s no going back, ‘flexible learning will be new
norm’. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/nation/ched-says-flexible-learning-new-norm
Salac, R.A. & Kim, Y.S. (2016, January). A study on the internet connectivity in the Philippines.
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315675551_A_Study_on_The_Internet_Connec
tivity_in_The_Philippines
Submarine Cable Networks (2020, February). Cable landing stations in the Philippines.
https://www.submarinenetworks.com/stations/asia/philippines