SIRCA Recipient Grace Mirandilla Santos featured for her study on the impact of slow and expensive Internet

PH Internet users ‘paying more’ for slow connection speed – study

Former SIRCA member and current LIRNEasia research fellow Grace Mirandilla Santos is bridging the research-policy gap in the Philippines by playing a leading role in getting the new rules on broadband quality approved.

“INTERNET users in the Philippines are “paying more for less” as the actual speed of their connection has never reached the “advertised speed” by Internet service providers (ISPs), a study showed.

Mary Grace Santos, a research fellow of the LIRNEasia, presented the results of their study during the hearing of the Senate committee on trade on the impact of slow and expensive Internet in the country.

Santos, said LIRNEasia is a regional ICT (Information and Communications Technology) think tank policy that has been conducting quality of service testings since 2010.

“Based on our study, we tested the basic data plans of the three major ISPs in the Philippines and if you can see here, from 2011, we actually saw deteriorating actual versus advertised speed from 2011 to 2014. That’s not the ideal scenario,” Santos said.

“In terms of value for money, we also saw that we’re actually paying more for less every year,” she said.
Santos said the “lowest value for money” was offered in 2014.”

Read the full article here.

Also check out her SIRCA project here.