The Philippines may see a quadrupling of its citizens signing up for high-speed Internet by 2012. Source of the forecast is silicon-chip-maker Qualcomm, which maintains representatives in Manila...
Chip-maker Qualcomm is predicting that the number of Filipinos who will be connected to high-speed Internet by 2012 may well quadruple from the present 10 million customers. The company’s representative in Manila, Mantosh Malhotra, has recently declared, “By 2010, we expect about eight to ten million 3G subscribers in the Philippines… some studies show that this can go up to 40 million by 2012...”
Key benefits for The Philippines are likely to be lower costs and an increased footprint for 3G over The Philippines, as technology improves. In turn, the benefits of 3G will play their part in alleviating local poverty.
Mr Malhotra is confident of the growth in question provided four factors converge: applications and devices appropriate for The Philippines, lower costs for the technology, and faster connection speeds. For him “...all these things have to come together...This has happened in a nice way now. We’re seeing this with laptops, and now, even mobile phones.”
What is more, Qualcomm acknowledges the part played by local companies in boosting 3G’s overall future. “In the early days, 3G technology was really for a niche market,” Mr Malhotra believes, recognising that 3G’s initial appeal was confined to afluent subscribers. Now, The Philippines had played its own part, making available to a broader customer base Universal Serial Bus (USB) broadband sticks.
More info:
