Filipinos may experience some level of improvement on our Internet access service as PLDT and Globe are already in talks on an IP peering agreement between the two telcos. IP peering means that Internet traffic originating from Globe going to PLDT and vice versa will no longer be routed through international peering exchanges. In other words, local traffic will be kept local.
There are no commitment dates though but at least this is already a step into the right direction.
Already PLDT has signed into an agreement with DOST’s Philippine Open Internet Exchange (PHOpenIX) which will improve access to government websites.
Majority of the data traffic accessed in the Philippines originate from North America and Europe. So aside from local IP peering, the telcos should also increase data caching within their networks to reduce the data traffic through the international fiber optic networks. PLDT has announced they will increase their caching capability next year.
Also we are awaiting for a third player in the telco industry to start operations. The new player is Telstra, an Australia based telco, who will enter into the Philippine market in partnership with San Miguel Corporation. The presence of a third player may spur better competition and thus better service and lower prices.
It remains to be seen if the Philippine telcos can keep up with the data demand. Users access images, videos and audio content which have larger data sizes compared to just plain text data. Our use of Facebook, Youtube and other multi-media heavy websites ad applications will continue to increase. This will put more pressure on our telcos to increase capacity while the users will continue to raise their expectations.