A post drawing the connection of Grace Poe to the Marcos dictatorship and slow internet is doing the rounds online.
In a Facebook post shared recently, a netizen tries to explain how the slow internet in the country, the Marcos dictatorship and Grace Poe are all entwined. Confused?
Never mind, the author of this post will explain this in a short while. By the way, he is none other than Ruben Carranza, who used to work as a lawyer from 1995-1999, mostly litigating at the National Telecommunications Commission.
The post opened by drawing a picture to illustrate how Grace Poe’s candidacy is funded and supported by the oligarchs as described by Ruben Carranza.
Mt. Corruption is part of a mountain range. Right beside it is Mt. Oligopoly presently sheltering presidential candidate Grace Poe.
What’s the connection among your slow internet in the Philippines, the Marcos dictatorship and candidate Grace Poe? the writer asked.
“It’s not because of the Smart/Globe duopoly. If that were so, those two would profit more if either one of them could provide faster internet. But the fastest internet frequency is inaccessible to both. Why? It’s because the fastest frequency is monopolized and controlled by San Miguel/Danding Cojuangco/ Ramon Ang. This is the frequency that would give the fastest internet speeds yet. Who owns this frequency? Liberty Telecoms.
Who owns Liberty?
Ramon Ang/Danding Cojuangco. Who was the original owner of Liberty Telecoms? Raymond Moreno. Who is Moreno? A military contractor during the Marcos dictatorship. Who is/was Moreno’s business partner? The chief of the Marcos military, Fabian Ver. (Both were sued for their corruption during the dictatorship: Moreno by the US government, Ver in the Philippines)
So why doesn’t Liberty just go ahead and compete with Globe and Smart then?
Because they don’t have access to enough capital and technology that it takes. They were going to get Australia’s Telstra. (And why an Australian company? Because that’s where Danding Cojuangco has parked the bulk of his assets.) But Telstra knew what many Filipinos distracted by the political circus and telenovelas don’t think much about: that Ramon Ang’s ‘capital’ isn’t money but political power.
“And Telstra won’t risk billions that it can’t recover if that political power isn’t guaranteed (which explains why Telstra wanted Ramon Ang to guarantee it would recover its money if they failed to get all the regulatory and infrastructure requirements that require political power to accomplish).
So this explains why Telstra ended talks with San Miguel as reported recently. Among the first to break the story was CNN Philippines. Click the link to read the details.
So what’s Ramon Ang’s alternative? How can Danding Cojuangco ensure that Liberty keeps its monopolized internet frequency? And tempt foreign money to come in and partner with him (without risking money he doesn’t have enough of)? And be able to ‘assure’ a foreign investor like Telstra that he has the kind of political power to ‘guarantee’ their monopoly and their profits forever?
Through a constitutional amendment, of course.
Now I understand why Grace Poe is also parroting the same pronouncements as other candidates. You may check the video below.
Here’s the final dot that should convince you, ladies and gents that Grace Poe is Danding Cojuangco/Ramon Ang puppet. Read the last part of the sentence.
“So there you go: the candidate who said she she won’t give Cojuangco any advantage is already promising to do it even before she can get herself elected. The bonus in all of this: someone’s spouse works as an IT consultant for Liberty Telecoms. His name is Neil Llamanzares.
(“And if I know much about Marcos, Cojuangco and Ver and the Marcos dictatorship, it’s because I pursued their ill-gotten wealth as PCGG Commissioner. But what do I know about telecoms regulation? From 1995-1999 I practiced law – and a large part of that practice was litigating at the National Telecommunications Commission. Di ba Gigo Alampay, Mr. Competition Commission?
“Disclosure: I represented PLDT on telecoms cases at the NTC. Next disclosure: as PCGG Commissioner, I helped recover PLDT shares acquired unlawfully by the Marcos family. And if I’m wrong about something in any of this, happy to be corrected – by Ellecer Valencia for example — or to debate it.)”
Here’s the video why Grace Poe is so confident she can deliver a fast internet if elected.
Original post.
Mt. Corruption is part of a mountain range. Right beside it is Mt. Oligopoly presently sheltering presidential candidate…
Posted by Sylvia Morningstar on Wednesday, March 16, 2016
What can you say about this? Just another propaganda to ruin Grace Poe’s chances in winning the Presidential derby?
Technically this article is incorrect. The frequencies of Smart and Globe could provide > 50Gbps download speed and >10Gbps upload speeds, if their network and equipment could handle it.
The slow internet is due to the lack of mirroring international websites in the Philippines, and lack of international bandwidth and slow back-end / internal network.
Just go to Indonesia and try Indosat or Telkomsel networks, or Thailand and try Dtac or True networks, you can have these fast speeds over the same frequencies 900Mhz as Smart and Globe, and much faster true international bandwidth.
Just based the blog post of Mr. Carranza who was the original writer of the post. I am inclined to believe your claim.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Technically, frequency might be a wrong term to use. However, come to think of it, Grace Poe is pushing for charter change so that foreign investors can own local corporations. This means that they don’t want to repeat what happened with Telstra if another foreign company would be interested in the future. Grace Poe is clearly a well-paid political puppet and I’m sure she’ll be counting her golden eggs once her presidency will be hatched.
This article is really very misleading. Clearly another player in the Philippine telco market would totally change things and drive prices. For a range of studies, the optimum number of telecom companies is about 4. This privides a good amount of completion.
The best ways to improve things is to force PLDT to spin off its backbone. Ideally it would be best to sell it to a non Pinoy company with deep pockets. Then force this new company to share bandwidth with any company that wants it.
Also – some form of local peering and the ability to have local data centers would really help.
I don’t know, but something just doesn’t seem right with Grace Poe. She’s too eager, too soon. This article does warrant some more investigation. I wouldn’t want another sellout to run my country, and I’m tired of people voting based on “morality” without proper intellectual discernment.
Mr. Crranza’s reason for the slow internet is pure hogwash and misleading. And pinning our broadband troubles on a conspiracy theory is absurd
Be it as it may that he knows about Marcos,and PLDT ownership issues, he doesnt understand even one thing about how your internet connection works.
These are the facts:
Globe has access to 900 MHz/1800 MHz /900/2100 MHz
Smart has – 850/1800/2100Mhz
And yes SMC has exclusive access to 700mhz
But its stupid to equate internet speed provided by this duopoly to their lack of access to a certain spectrum. It doesnt matter what spectrum you use if you have no motivation to provide better service and your international bandwidth is inadequate.
Our ADSL lines can support a maximum of 24Mbps, but ADSL subscribers in Philippines don’t even reach 1/4 of this speed. Why? Because PLDT/Globe wants you to pay more. (Try subscribing to the more expensive Fibr broadband at around 3500 and you’ll get 50mbps).
Secondly, pldt/globes international bandwith capacity is wanting.
Proof, comes from PLDT’ mouth itself:
PLDT has around 1.6 Tbps international capacity, as per a 2015 interview with rappler . They have around 4 million broadband subscribers as per a recent pr release. 1.6Tbps / 4 million = 400Kbps. A measly 400kbps or 50KB/sec is available to each PLDT subscriber if we all used our connections at the same time.
Wait weren’t you paying for a 3mbps connection??
sources:
http://pldt.com/…/pldt-group-is-preferred-broadband…
http://www.rappler.com/…/99482-philippines-internet…
Gobyerno talaga may kasalanan bat mabagal internet! Isisisi pa nila sa telcos e sila naman may control! Ano ba yan!
Wala e, gobyerno lang dapat sisihin. Sila ang nagcocontrol sa lahat. Di na kasalanan ng smart o glibe kung mabagal net. Itong bansa na natin ang problema!
Khit magkanda kuba kuba mga tva telcos kung gobyerno ang hindrance sa mabilis na internet, wala din, useless!
Kung hnahayaan sana ng gobyerno ang tamang speed ng internet, edi wala sana issue!