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FROM THE ONE wifi hotspot early last year, the city now has no less than seven establishments equipped with "wireless fidelity" Internet access. Wifi refers to the technology that enables people to connect wirelessly to the Internet and local area networks. In Davao, the current hotspots are the following: Basti’s Brew in Victoria Plaza; BluGre Cafe in Landco Corporate Centre; Formula Pete’s Auto Clinic (this is actually a coffee shop) in Wheels n’ More Drive; The Marco Polo Hotel Davao; Grand Regal Hotel; and, Casa Leticia.
GlobeQUEST (Innove Communications Inc.) is the access provider of all except one of these hotspots. The other is a homegrown IT company that also operates some of the better Internet cafes in the city, known as NetXpress.
Used to be that a handful of colleagues and I would be the only ones surfing the ‘Net at Basti’s Brew (where I usually write my column). But now, at any given time, there’d be at least two or three patrons with wifi-enabled notebooks checking their e-mail or downloading stuff, or even connecting to their corporate networks to do some work. In fact, right now as I write this, there are six of us using the coffee shop’s Internet facility. Other hotspots are also seeing a marked increase in the number of people making use of their wireless connectivity.
Connecting to wifi requires a device that is outfitted with a wireless LAN card (PCMCIA or USB); in new portable computer models it’s bound to be built-in, especially Centrino notebooks. There are also palmtops and PDA-phones that are wifi-ready. When you have such a device and you are in a wifi hotspot, your device should be able to detect the access point, which is the machine that broadcasts the Internet connectivity. All it takes after that is to login to this connection.
GlobeQUEST charges for its service: users can purchase prepaid vouchers that contain the necessary login information. While the charging rates are rather expensive, wifi users are provided broadband Internet and the convenience of being able to connect from comfortable surroundings.
In Metro Manila, there are moves towards city-wide wireless access. The technology for this is already available, but there are a few serious bumps on the road. Wifi operates on radio frequency, particularly the 2.4GHz spectrum. This spectrum, while identified by the National Telecommunications Commission as a "national resource", is franchised to the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) for its operations in Luzon. The Meralco has been using transmission equipment operating on this spectrum for a decade now, and the emergence of wifi hotspots is causing interference in the power company’s intra-office data transmissions. This problem is creating legal dilemmas and thus poses a huge stumbling block to plans of rolling out any city-wide implementation of wireless Internet. (For more on this, please refer to the NTC’s website: www.ntc.gov.ph/laws-frame.html.)
In Davao, the 2.4GHz band is not legally monopolized by any entity. But will a city-wide connectivity to the Internet be feasible? It would be a tremendous boost to the IT community, as well as to all groups that rely on the Internet for their business. But as my good friend Dr. Jaime Haw Jr., who more than just dabbles in computers and IT, put it: "Who’ll foot the bill?"
Is there now a critical mass of Internet users in Davao? Judging by the sustained number of Internet cafes (more than 100), and the activation of more wifi hotspots, it might be easy to conclude so. But in my opinion, it’s not only the quantity of Internet users that’s important, but, well, the quality. The best means to increase the utilization of any service is to show the potential market that such a service will increase quality of life. Right now, many still do not appreciate or accept the scores of ways by which the Internet can improve one’s standard of living. Most users still only stick to e-mail or IM. To the majority, the World Wide Web–the largest resource on the Internet–is nothing more than a tool for meeting people (Friendster, etc.) or for Google-ing.
What about doing business on-line? What about conducting training modules for, say, the English language via the Web? These are but a few examples of commercial activities that are already feasible via the Internet.
The information highway, having been established already a decade ago, is unfortunately being taken for granted now as merely a communications tool. But it is a whole lot more than that: it is an avenue for business, for community-building, for propaganda, and even for nation-building.
This entry was posted on Saturday, 9 April 2005 at 9:58 am and is filed under Government, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
