Making Sense of the NBN Project

Heh, yeah.. All this waiting for WiMAX and it seems it will come to nothing.

Abe,

It’s not about WiMax or Broadband, it’s about Gloria. 15 billion for broadband for government bureaucrats will only go to waste. One good point asked by one senator (I believe it was Roxas) is whether other people besides government can use it. Imagine if the DECS and public schools can benefit.

As far as the bureaucracy, the benefit is mainly in bringing the provinces closer to the executive and Manila government offices, but I doubt if the bureaucrats would be so excited about using video conferencing and such.

It’s preposterous.

If we’re talking tech here, why not invest the Php15 billion in already-existing broadband ventures in government? There’s DOST ASTI’s PREGINET. Another is DA’s satellite VPN.

Take note that these projects already exist, and are struggling for financial support. The people behind these projects are competent — heck, I would dare say that they are patriotic, given the measly wages they receive for the amount of service they provide.

Sadly, though, it’s not about technology. Not at all. It’s about corruption and greed, and all the other things these foster.

Too bad. Politicians have to pretend and sound that know what they’re talking about.

A classic example of why progress is so little in the country.

In the US, lobying was legalized to create even-footed competition among their govt. contractors, hence technical deliveries of contract services are not lost after an award. Yes, the broadband deal is a great leap, but with so much weight carried, we always as usual get bogged down for the same reasons.
Can we ever learn, anybody?

WiMaz to serve the last-mile?

The 6-mile Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) range of WiMax is about the size of a small city. This is ideal for road warriors who browse the net on their laptops in their cars, cellphones, or generally, the very mobile upscale yuppies. Urban lifestyle. That’s the purpose of WiMax when this second-generation protocol was designed.

But if the purpose, as Formoso stresses, is to bring voice/data/image/video to remote, unwired, 5th and 6th class municipalities whose residents may have not even actually seen a computer or cellphone in their lifetime, what’s the use of spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollar (or even a million, if you divide the $330M over 300)for a single base station which has the capacity to communicate wireless at 42MBps to a 28 square mile-area, just to connect a remote barangay hall or one public school to the network? (Disregard, for now, the fact that DepEd will also install CyberEd with satellite capability.)

Why use the cellphone to wakeup the maid when you can use the doorbell?

Not worth the money.

Hey, I read in some blog that some senator was asking what broadband was. OMG!

Yeah, Mr. O, can you help educate our senators what the heck this techie stuff’s all about?

As an accountant I am pretty much interested in the economic viability of the project.

For an ordinary person, savings of 20 billion is kind of WOW, that’s a lot but subjecting it to the accountan’ts and economist’s tools of evaluating the project, it falls flat of the rosy picture the proponents are “painting” to make it economically viable.

The NPV of the project before adjustment is negative.
Before adjustment means before inclusion of some more barangays which are already covered by another project of Deped.

NEDA’s computed economic NPV (net present value)is negative at P1,581.45 million.

That means given the future stream of inflows for in the form of savings from the project, the cost is still more than the savings.

The EIRR of 13.01 percent is only viable if the interest remaines low for the duration of the project or remains fixed. It seems the interest of the loan is commercial and not that of a government to government loan.

I think some senators should be educated first about the latest technologies in communication. Mar Roxas was comparing the WIMAX just like his cellphone, hence no need to have one.

Some items that I feel were not properly addressed.

1. NBN is a government backbone project, only national, regional, provincial, municipal and barangay agencies will be connected. I doubt if anybody in private capacity will be able to use it (i.e. private Internet Access).

2. NBN should address net neutrality issues. Just do a traceroute from your ISP to any .gov.ph site and you will see how far the route takes. Some of the nodes traversed are foreign and might end up in some unfriendly coutries. A man in the middle attack is a possibility and some “unfriendlies” end up monitoring government traffic.

Government traffic requires secure channels and NBN should be able to address this by keeping Philippine government traffic within Philippine geographic bounderies and in routes/sites it directly controls.

3. Anytime you have additional bandwidth, it is a positive/good thing.

4. The NBN should be able to allocate IP address for itself. I don’t know the current availability status at APNIC for a Class A IP address. But, in case no Class A is readily available a Private Class A address should be used for NBN use (i.e. 10.x.x.x). We all know how difficult it is to keep a static IP address for your use once you change carriers. NBN should properly address this issue.

5. Only one Internet gateway for NBN that is properly secured. No end nodes should have separate Internet connectivity or we end up opening the system to “unfriendlies”.

6. Security of government communications should have been a major selling factor of NBN. I guess this was overlooked during the part of the hearings I witnessed.

7. Again this is a field of dreams scenario “Build and they will come”. No private telco will do last mile on missionary sites. NBN proponents should have brought up pole rights as one of the biggest hindrance in last mile solutions, making wireless a very attractive proposition.

8. I doubt if it would be worthwhile debating technical issues with the senators. If there is a problem with the contract, the right venue would be the courts, where the rules are well established.

9. With the television cameras turned on, senators will yearn for “Pogi” points. This maybe the reason for the inane questions thrown at the panelist. In a sense, we witnessed first hand, how shallow the understanding of our senators of the technical issues at hand.

10. My fear will be that the project will be bogged down at the legislative and legal level, that the technology will long be outdated, before it ever gets to be installed.

simple lang ang problema……

This has been happening OVER and OVER again…. a government project that has corruption all over it….

Why the hell our government officials always needs to BE REACTIVE?

Why the hell the senate always wants to have a show and waste time with something that can be prevented?…

Lagi na lang ganyan…. SENATE inquiry CRAP and B*LLSH*T….

Can we become PRO-ACTIVE? setup rules and guidelines and processes and before signing anything we make sure things are the way they supposed to be?…..

Kala ko matatalino ang mga asa senado….mga bobo pala….

or cyempre gusto nila magpasikat…para sila naman ang maiboto sa susunod…

I commend Mr. Ricky Gonzalez for giving such a concise but clear-eyed additional overview of this project. And in my limited understanding, I envision it as some kind of over-sized but secure WAN owned and controlled by the government. Thus, the propriety of using private IP addresses, which is what some big private telecom companies here resort to.

And as I recall here in the US, this type of IT network deployment was used in the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane in NOLA, when all essential IT infrastructure was adjudged down and out. And it was rendered effective for its purposes. And I understand this same technology was also used effectively in the ravaged areas during the Aceh Indonesia tsunami.

But a few more questions. Granted that no private telcos will be used for last mile concerns, how are the remote barangays admitted into the loop? The WiMax’s 6-mile range still will not be sufficient. When we were in a remote barrio in Bukidnon (at least 50kms from the nearest city), we could connect laptops to the internet using cell phones as the media. Conclusion: where ubiquitous cell sites are located, internet access is available. And additionally, access to the government network.

Mention was made of net neutrality and am not sure how this particular issue factors in this case. I believe it should be net security that would be of primary concern, as aptly pointed out. Net neutrality has now become more of a political issue, whether there should be unrestrained freedom from regulations or restrictions, or not. But I could be wrong.

I’ve been working in a multinational telecom company for sometime now, even had the opportunity to work with ZTE years ago in a project.I fully understand the deal, and yes even know some “facts” going around the industry but I will not elaborate. I agree with most of Ricky have stated. Generally, I believe a NBN project will be something useful…the problem is the process,etc.
Honestly, I cant watch the Senate hearing too long by listening with all those non-sense statements from senators who are aspiring to become a president. It only appears they are know-it-all guys but truth is NADA.Nakakairita, nasasayang lang oras. Why not do their homeworks, at least consult a telecom executive before blabbering in the hearing??? Even our neophyte engineers and technicians at the office laughs at them!

It’s a pity just for the heck of it Senators jokey for media mileage hoping to get the maximum exposure competing with Marimar and Margarita for the tv ratings.

Anyways, the fun side of it is, that is for the IT yuppies out there, the whole world will see the stupidity of Philippine senators in all their splendor.

Sen. Noynoy Aquino
“Is this system 100% secured?”

DOTC Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III
“No your honor. There is no system in the world that can claim to be 100% secured.

Sen. Noynoy Aquino fuming
“If this system is not 100% secured then why are we entering into this project?”

DOTC Assistant Secretary Lorenzo Formoso III explains for the benefit of the ignorant son of Ninoy Aquino.
“As i’ve said your honor, there is no system that is 100% secured.”

Ang hinahanap ni Sen. Noynoy ay system na 100% secured. Sana may makita sya.

Sen. Biazon asking Atty. Formoso
“You say that there are 300+ nodes for this project all over the Philippines and each node has a radius of 30kms. So you cannot cover the whole Philippines?”

Atty. Formoso
“Yes sir there are 300++ nodes with 30km radius each but it can cover the entire country.”

Sen.Biazon
“You said 30km radius, if i multiply this by 300++ it will not reach the entire country from Luzon to Mindanao coz i did the math.”

Atty. Formoso
“The 300++ nodes cover those places that have no wired access sir.”

Marunong pala mag taymis si Sen.Biazon

abe you missed the point or you were not listening intently. basic issues are:
1. deal was done behind our backs.
2. there was a dispute on the “amount” (who will benefit, how much is paid to whom, advances, etc)
3. the government with their resources did not provide a “baseline” specification for the network (so is the ZTE deal comprehensive enough coz they have inside info of what the govt needs).
4. if it went pushed thru and “everybody happy” it would just be inserted in the annual budget (for your info the annual budget is like reading three pldt directory), we end up paying it without us knowing – just like the north rail project which again is financed by China.
5. Neda was hesitant at first to endorsed it, signed it at the last minute, and Sec. Neri was transferred to CHED.
6. Do the math – something is fishy.

Most of us are techie here so lets settle a bit. Let’s make these senators ask some of these questions to benefit the more percentage of our nation’s non techie ones, including themselves.

On the other note, I think this project would even cost more than presented value. To maintain this nationwide network would be a pain. If pushed through, i hope it won’t end up being sold to a private sectors in the long term…. and money has gone to pockets of our dear politicians.

I’ve been hearing negative feedback about WiMAX worldwide. One of them will be on:

http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/media/podcasts_transcript.cfm?ObjectID=6

Ian said:
“The people behind these projects are competent — heck, I would dare say that they are patriotic, given the measly wages they receive for the amount of service they provide.”

Thanks for this Ian. I’m not sure if we already met personally. We(PREGINET NetOps) appreciate the recognition on your comment.

Ian said:
“That said, I believe we already have similar projects, albeit using private carriers for the long-haul: PREGINET, for example, uses Globe/Innove (last I checked, but I could be wrong since it’s been two years since I have had a chance working with them) for their regional access points, with wireless (for some areas) for last-mile connectivity.”

Yes, we are currently connected to Globe, PHOpenIX and APAN/TEIN2 network. We have more than 300 Mbs of aggregate outbound bandwidth for the R&D and commodity transit. We are still using wifi as a last-mile solution for remote connectivity.

Ian said:
“Speaking of last-mile, I wonder what happened to ASTI’s project with NTT on WIPAS? I was part of the field testing then, and the results were pretty impressive: 40MBps for up to two km. That’s using point-to-multipoint.”

A failure due to leadership issue. This is what happen when there are too many non-technical person involved on a technical project. :(

Hey all of you Inquirer.net traffic, go to my site. Just click BrianB. Thanks.

In terms of transparency, all government agencies are required to prepare their Annual Procurement Program to be submitted to the Department of Budget and Management and to be presented come budget hearing at both the senate and congress. This Program outlines and specifies all the requirements, services, projects etc. to be procured or to be undertaken by an agency for the following year. Unfortunately, as what Senator Roxas, if im not mistaken, found out last Wednesday at the senate inquiry, this NBN particularly the ZTE deal, is not included in the Annual Procurement Program of the implementing agency which is the DOTC. In cases like this, i think this is where AndresB’s idea of media vigilance should come in. But sad to say, this country has only a handful of Jarius Bondocs.

I really liked the way they came off