Is RP ripe for DSL?
By Erwin Lemuel G. Oliva
Inquirer.net

WHAT’S wrong with the Internet these days in the Philippines?

It is slow. The World Wide Web in this part of the world is still the World Wide Wait.

At this time, few Filipinos can enjoy the multimedia features of the Internet because most are still using dial-up accounts of up to 56 Kbps (thousands of bits per second) or even less.

This year, however, broadband technology like Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) promises to change the pathetic state of Internet access in the country.

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., Globe Telecom and Eastern Telecom Philippines Inc. have begun offering DSL services to local subscribers this year. Unconfirmed reports, however, indicate this service has been available via some local Internet service providers.

Among the different local offerings, dominant carrier PLDT currently seems to be the only provider of DSL services to consumers. The rest offer packages limited to "corporate" users.

PLDT’s DSL offering to consumers, for instance, cost about P1,500 (which already includes an unlimited Internet access) plus a recurring monthly rate of P2,000. This service has speeds of up to 128 Kbps downstream (download speed) and 64 Kbps upstream (upload speed). This obviously is a big improvement on the existing 56Kpbs dial-up speed readily available in the country. A more expensive "professional" package has speeds of up to 256 Kbps downstream and 128 Kbps upstream.

Globe’s DSL offering, on the other hand, initially targets corporate customers. Prices start at $1,000 a month. The company, however, points out that its DSL service is of a different type because it offers equal downstream and upstream speeds of 128 Kbps up to 2 Mbps. This service is called symmetric DSL.

Globe expects to launch its more affordable DSL services early next year.

Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc. is another local telephone firm offering asymmetric DSL, similar to what PLDT is offering. But the company prefers to initially extend services to corporate customers as well.

How does DSL work?

DSL uses the existing copper wires that connect your home to a telephone company like PLDT.

Originally, these copper wires were created to handle voice signals, which is analog. So when you talk on a telephone, you’ve voice, which is an analog signal, is converted to an "electrical charge, " and is sent through the copper wires down to the telephone company then to an intended destination where it is converted back to an analog signal.

Telephone firms had been using this "signaling" process to transmit voice calls back and forth between your telephone and the telephone company. This is the same reason why the modem was invented because the computer can only transmit digital instead of analog signals through the telephone company’s network. The modem acts as a modulator/demodulator, which turns analog signal into digital signal and vice versa.

The Plain Old Telephone System or the traditional telephone networks today can only transmit about 56 Kbps (thousands of bits per second) over copper wires using ordinary modems.

In other words, your computer can only receive so much information because it is constrained by the telephone company’s system of processing digital and analog information. Information from your computer arrives as digital data, puts it into analog form for your telephone line, and requires your modem to change it back into digital. This in itself is a bottleneck.

DSL assumes that information transmitted through the telephone company’s network is digital. Thus, data will require no conversion from analog form and back. Digital data is readily transmitted to your computer directly as digital data. This allows a telephone company to use more bandwidth for transmitting data back to you.

DSL also allows telephone firms to separate signals to analog and digital. This means that using the same bandwidth, you can now use your telephone and computer on the same line and at the same time.

With DSL, therefore, Filipinos will be able to view motion video, audio images through their computers.

DSL in the Philippines

Sadly, DSL has yet to make a splash in the Philippines because the existing network infrastructure of most of the local telephone firms have to be "reconfigured" for this type of technology.

Globe, for instance, can only offer DSL services in central business districts in Makati City and Ortigas, and in neighboring areas like Pasig and Mandaluyong, according to Jesus Romero, assistant vice president of Globe’s Business Communications Fixed Network Group. Globe also offers DSL services in the central business districts of Cebu City and Davao.

PLDT’s DSL service, on the other end, is available in Alabang, Ortigas (Pasig), Makati and Greenhills (San Juan).

"The growing popularity of DSL indicates that people in the country are not happy with their current connections to the Internet," said Romero.

Citing a study by Techknowledge Asia last June 2000, he indicated that majority of local consumers or 49.6 percent of a sample of 1,364 subscribers, still access the Internet using dial-up accounts with speeds of up to 56Kbps. Similarly, a study done by the same group on Dec. 1999 indicate that 40.2 percent of 300 commercial subscribers involved in the study use 56Kbps dial-up accounts to go online.

"Telephone firms are beefing up DSL services next year because they believe that there is a mounting demand for broadband Internet technology in the Philippines," said Romero.