BAGUIO CITY, Philippines -- An American company has reminded government to continue building its own Internet backbone, despite the outrage over the kickback scandal that has cost Malacañang its National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with China?s ZTE Corp.

Eric Pearson, senior vice president of the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), said business process outsourcing (BPO) firms that started investing in the country "can live" with the present online and telecommunications highway in the country but the industry would expect "a bonus" in an improved online capacity.

The NBN was supposed to widen access to the Internet, and connect even village governments to a central government data hub, to make taxation, licensing and data banking more efficient.

But allegations of kickbacks, which ostensibly led to cost overpricing, forced President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to scuttle the contract she drew up with the ZTE Corp., whose proposal to build the NBN was approved over two other proposals.

The Senate has pursued these allegations in a series of public hearings.

Pearson inaugurated the second IHG reservation center at Camp John Hay here on Tuesday.

The IHG Manila and Baguio facilities handle bookings and requests of 30 to 40 percent of the hotel chains? global network.

According to Pearson, the network portfolio is composed of 3,900 hotels worldwide, including the InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Holiday Express.

IHG Baguio has been operating in the summer capital since October 2007 due in part to the climate and to a high work pool of college graduates, said Michael Kacho, IHG Center director.

He described the graduates as computer and Internet literate.

"Equally important [to our operations] is the infrastructure. Because we are virtually running entire operations where all the rest of the equipment are seating in either Atlanta (Georgia) or other parts of the world, having a strong digital background is critically important," Pearson said.

"As a company doing business in the Philippines in general, that?s extremely important, so we are very pleased to have that endorsement to have that digital backbone included. We?d love to continue to see further improvements in the infrastructure especially for telecommunications,? he said.

Pearson said the country needed its own system in light of the 2006 disruption of voice-responsive services in the web due to an earthquake that hit Taiwan.

"That?s probably an area where we?d love to continue seeing the government reinforce the infrastructure," he said.

When asked about the firm?s reactions to the ZTE-NBN scandal, Pearson said IHG?s local counterparts kept them abreast about the controversy, referring to Kacho and JJ Sinclair, IHG director for the Philippines and the Asia Pacific.

"When we did the initial due diligence, we made sure we had enough redundancy of power, complete redundancy of telecommunications [in Baguio and Manila]," he said.

Kacho said it was a tossup between Baguio and Cebu when IHG laid out plans to develop BPOs here.

"For us it would be a bonus to see more [Internet broadband infrastructure built], but right now we are very pleased with what we have here and continue to see growth," he said.

IHG is testing a more streamlined web program in the Baguio facility, which would be replicated in all 12 reservation centers around the globe.

Pearson said the Philippine centers would end up carrying the load for 16,000 new hotels, expected to rise within the year.