Finally, a choice for TV viewers

THE ANNOUNCEMENT last week that Filipinos living in the Middle East would be able to watch GMA Network's Channel 7 television programs from the end of this month, was welcome news.

For six years now, Filipinos in the Kingdom have had only ABS-CBN Broadcasting's The Filipino Channel (TFC) to watch. Of course, TFC has filled a vast hole in the television programming needs of overseas Filipino workers who yearned for news and entertainment from back home. But it has also been the target of much criticism, from its biased news coverage of major political events such as the impeachment of former president Joseph Estrada, to crappy variety shows, to a schedule that is constantly being tinkered with.

Not only that, but TFC's customer service has left much to be desired over the years, though with the imminent arrival of GMA's shows via the Pinoy Plus package of channels that will soon be launched on the Orbit Television platform, they have visibly struggled to provide better service. Despite these efforts, TFC has been plagued by complaints of viewers who say they can never reach customer service representatives on the phone, have weak satellite signals, and are cut off days before their subscription period is finished.

Pinoy Plus, like TFC, will offer four channels: a main one, which will carry GMA's general news and entertainment programming; a 24-hour movie channel; a music channel and a sports channel. The bonus here is that it will be offered with other Orbit channels, such as the Disney Channel and Orbit News, for SR76 a month, which is roughly what TFC charges.

The imminent arrival of GMA channels has sent TFC executives scurrying to prepare a defense. TFC held a "thanksgiving" dinner meeting with community leaders in Jeddah this week in an attempt at getting community feedback on how it can better improve its products.

Competition is always a good thing for consumers as it provides choice, cheaper prices and better service. We in Saudi Arabia have already seen the benefits of competition in telecommunications with the slashed telephone charges and improved services offered by Saudi Telecom, which fears the entry of the country's second mobile phone operator Itisalat later this year. Hopefully, Filipino TV viewers will soon also reap the benefits of competition when the GMA network channels are launched.

May the best network win!

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The bad idea of a national ID system

THE LATEST in hare-brained schemes hatched by lawmakers and supported by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a proposed comprehensive internal security law that would include a national identification system.

Not only will this be a dangerous infringement on people's privacy and civil liberties, it could be abused as a tracking system to keep tabs on and to punish legitimate critics of the government. On top of that, Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casino has estimated that it could cost the country at least 1.6 billion pesos to issue a digitized ID card for every
adult Filipino.

One just has to look at countries that have long had national ID systems in place, such as France and Saudi Arabia, to see that every citizen having a national ID card is hardly a deterrent to determined terrorists. Even the US, home to the safety-obsessed Department of Homeland Security, and the much abused Patriot Act that has stripped away many of the civil liberties and safeguards once enjoyed by all those living in the United States, does not have a national ID system.

Sure it has a Social Security number system, just like the Social Security System numbers in the Philippines, which all Americans have and use on all official documents. But it never has and probably will never have ID cards issued by the federal authorities. That smacks too much of Big Brother, and Americans would never stand for it.

Of course, the Philippine government is saying that a national ID system would make it easier for them to track down criminals. Whether this is true or not is hard to tell. Unless you turn the Philippines into a virtual police state with checkpoints at every street corner to check people's IDs, then I don't see how having a national ID system would help to better track terrorists.

I think national ID cards give authorities a false sense of security that they can instantly track where someone has been by using his unique identification number. The truth is that governments across the globe are already overwhelmed by an excess of data gleaned from passports, credit cards and intercepted phone calls, which they hardly have the resources, let alone the time, to sift through in any intelligible way.

Instead of dreaming up bogus ways of spending taxpayers' money, legislators would do better to spend the 1.6 billion pesos on promoting birth control methods and giving public schools decent buildings and textbooks with which to work with.

An internal security law may look impressive on paper, but it hardly serves the national security priority of putting a brake a runaway population growth rate and improving the education being given to young Filipinos.

Comments or questions? E-mail the author at rasheed@arabnews.com.

Editor's note: GMA-7 is a parent company of INQ7.net