Although the Philippines has managed to undo the decades old monopoly in the telecommunications industry, much remains to be desired in ensuring fair and healthy competition, much less in achieving universal access. Telecommunications companies or telcos are not about to share its resources, money and information without a price — even if it means everyone's access to phones and the internet. Unless perhaps when the process is painless.

This thought has been at the core of a proposal of Dr. Emmanuel Lallana, Chief Executive of Ideacorp. He proposed a Universal Internet Access (UIA) Virtual Fund that can make public interent access centres in all villages possible. “I don't think traditional fund will work for the Philippines. We have to make it painless for the telcos,” he said, noting that there is an absence of a strong consumer movement in the country.

Several countries in the region including Australia and India are implementing similar schemes, which have been traditionally referred as universal service obligation (USO). Australia's USO ensures standard telephone service and payphones as well as prescribes pricing standards, among others. Lallana also cited India's USO Fund which is intended to provide low-cost telegraph services in rural areas and maintain village public telephones, among others.

Under Lallana's proposed UIA Virtual Fund scheme, telcos will be compeled to devote a percentage of either their gross or net income for the fund. Unlike traditional taxes, the money will not be turned over to the government but will be allocated for village internet centres that the telcos themselves will establish and manage. The government, in turn, will set guidelines over the technologies and internet services in the village centres and eventually monitor the performance of every village centre. Villages to be covered under the scheme must be unserved areas or areas which are not reached by telcos because of the areas' unprofitability.

In the early 1990s, the Philippine government launched the Service Area Scheme (SAS) to build up the strength of then emerging players in the telecommunications industry. Each player as well as the phone giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company were assigned areas of operations. Moreover, each were asked to subsidise a landline line in an unprofitable area for every land line installed in a profitable area. But because of affordability issues, only three lines were subscribed out of ten. Moreover, SAS failed to anticipate the emergence of mobile phones, which further lessened the demand for land lines.

Learning from the Service Area Scheme (SAS), Lallana qualified that “[any] UIA policy needs to be forward-looking — includes broadband and [oriented] towards a next-generation-network environement — and address convergence.” Lallana, who served as a Commissioner of the Human Capital Development Group of the Philippine Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), also clarified that broadband services in these villages must not be based on minimum speeds. “[There must be] standards for quality of service, interoperability, ease of upgrading and security (minus filtering),” he said.

However, some members of civil society have qualms over the regulation of the village centres as well as the village centres' choice of services. Lallana admitted that for a UIA policy to be more effective, complementary policies such as those on Competition, Open Communications and Spectrum Management must be sound.

The Roundtable Discussion on Achieving Universal Internet Access in the Philippines was organised by the Foundation for Media Alternatives and Ideacorp and was held on 15 May 2009 in Quezon City.