THE REAL DIGITAL DIVIDE

THE REAL DIGITAL DIVIDE

Dear Mr. President: What is the digital divide? Perhaps you have been asked that question, and perhaps you have come up with many answers. To begin with, Wikipedia defines the digital divide as “unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops and the internet”. Techtarget defines the digital divide as “the term that defines the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology (ICT) and those that don’t or have restricted access”. Techtarget also says that this technology can include “telephone, television, personal computers and internet connectivity”.

The Internet society offers a definition that is similar to Techtarget, because they say that the digital divide is “the gap between those who have and do not have access to computers and the internet”. However, the society argues that the digital divide is multifaceted, because it includes many other factors such as availability, affordability, quality of service and relevance.

On the other hand, Microsoft Copilot defines the digital divide as “the gap created by unequal access to modern telecommunications technology among different demographic groups and regions”. However, the AI tool also says that the digital divide encompasses many other dimensions, namely access, skills and affordability.

Mr. President, I think that it could be argued that right now, access to internet connectivity may be available, but it is not affordable. Looking back, my friend, the late ICT expert Louie Casambre once told me that it is not true that internet in the Philippines is slow. He said that fast internet is available in the Philippines, but it is expensive. Extrapolating from what Louie said, it is clear that the solution is to make fast internet available to everybody.

Setting aside the technical definitions, I believe Mr. President that the “social divide” is the real cause of the “digital divide”. In other words, most of our people could not afford the faster devices and the faster internet, because they are poor. Simply put, the poorer Filipinos will be able to cross the digital divide on their own if only the gap of the “social divide” could be bridged.

In the meantime that we could not bridge that gap, I have some suggestions as to how we could make internet faster not only for the rich, but also for the poor. Firstly, we should broaden the participation of telcos in the Internet Exchange (IX), so that no provider of bandwidth would be excluded. Secondly, we should fully utilize that broadened IX by expanding our local cache of “cookies”, instead of our Internet Service Providers (ISPs) fetching these “cookies” all the time from the same servers abroad. Thirdly, we should promote more interconnectivity agreements between telcos, so that signals could seamlessly “pass through” between them. Fourthly, the DICT should shift its focus from providing “last mile” connectivity to building a broader “backbone” for internet connectivity.

Ever since my time as the Director General of the National Computer Center, I have always said that there is nothing wrong with a national infrastructure that is built through a “patchwork” of all telco connections. I still believe in that, Mr. President, but looking into the future, I now believe that our new focus should be on a broader backbone that the government owns, a backbone that even the private ISPs could also use. IKE SENERES/10-08-2024