There’s a catch though
Here’s good news for people living outside of Manila – the government is reportedly looking to provide provinces free WiFi access this year via the Php 1.4B project of the Department of Science and Technology. According to DOST-ICTO exectutive director Louis Casmbre, the free WiFi project maybe deployed as soon as June and completed by November.
Under their plan, government buildings and facilities as well as several community areas will be provided with free WiFi access to the big ol’ net. This includes town plazas, transport terminals, schools, hostpitals, public parks as well as the buildings of both national and local agencies.
There’s a slight catch though – the free WiFi (and subsequently, internet access) will have a data cap per day – 50MB at the entry level, 100MB for people who can provide a valid government ID through web registration, and 300MB a day for people e who have a digital ID as obtained through the National Public Key Infrastructure program, according to Interaksyon.
It seems that the goal of the project is to widen the reach of the government’s services that are on the web, and not to act as competition to local firms.
“The project is designed to be non-compete with the private sector, we do not want to disrupt the market. One purpose also of the levels is really to incentivize e-government, as the digital IDs will allow government services to be used electronically,” Casambre said.
