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The National Telecommunication (NTC) on Friday said they will find out this month if telcos are complying with President Rodrigo Duterte’s order to improve their internet service by the end of 2020.

“We can see that there is an increase (in internet speed). The average speed is increasing so there is an improvement however, it’s not very substantial. We will see by December, this month, by end of this month, if there is a big improvement in the speed compared to November,” NTC Deputy Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba said during Laging Handa’s public briefing.

Cordoba said based on Ookla results, an international web service that provides free analysis of Internet access performance metrics test, the internet speed in the country as of November is 28.69 mbps which is a bit higher compared to the 25 mbps internet speed before Duterte gave his directive to telco operators.

“So the glide is upward… When the Joint Memorandum Circular was issued and after the president gave a directive to speed up the processing (of cell sites), we issued a lot of permits, 600 percent on the average compared to 2019,” he said.

“It takes time to build cell sites, around three months. So we see an improvement, November and even much more in December. And by next quarter or next year first quarter, it will increase more because at that time a lot of cell sites were already built,” he added.

Cordoba said their benchmark when it comes to internet speed will be coming from the third telco player, Ditto, which is 27 mbps.

He also said that they submitted a proposal to Congress increasing the penalty of non-compliance telco companies from P200 to P2 million per violation a day.

“A law is needed… We already filed in the House and Senate increasing the penalty imposed by the Commission,” Cordoba added.

Malacanang on Thursday said the Philippines is ranked 33 out of 50 countries in the latest speed test global index which is only one rank higher compared to the last October survey. Ella Dionisio/DMS