“YESTERDAY (Friday), Comelec Chair Sixto Brilliantes Jr. was quoted by media as saying that about 18,000 or 25 percent out of the 78,000 PCOS were unable to transmit election returns because (1) these PCOS were deployed in areas that did not have a cellular signal and (2) network congestion or “heavy traffic.”
“To clarify, we would like to point out that:
“1. The combined networks of Smart and Sun have a signal in every city and municipality in the country.
2. In the 2010 elections, the PPCRV servers received election returns from 80 percent of the PCOS machines within 12 hours from the closing of the polling precincts. Eventually, 92 percent of PCOS machines transmitted results.
3. Our networks did not suffer congestion, or heavy traffic at any point throughout the election process, including the first six hours after the closing of the polling precincts when traffic from PCOS machines was at its peak.
4. Traffic generated by the PCOS machines did not pose a problem for our cellular networks because each transmission was relatively small—only about 80 kb—and was easily and quickly delivered by our data network.
5. Moreover, as per the requirements of the Comelec, the data transmissions generated by the PCOS machines were coursed through a virtual private network dedicated to handling this traffic. This means that the PCOS data were not mixed with the regular voice and data traffic of the network, further ensuring that the transmissions would be delivered quickly.”