Gov’t to start accepting bids for nationwide free Wi-Fi

MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) will start its public bidding for the government’s planned free public Internet access nationwide by the end of March.

Undersecretary Luis Napoleon Casambre of the information and communications technology (ICT) office of the DOST said the agency would start accepting bid offers from the private sector.

“The bidding will start within next week or the following week,” Casambre said in an interview over Radyo Inquirer 990AM.

He said the free public Wi-Fi would cover 967 municipalities across the country.

“This is for the classes 3, 4, 5, 6 (municipalities),” he said, citing these are the “unserved areas” in the country which does not have any access to Internet.

“So we expect it’ll take us almost to the end of November,” he said.

But he said the initial rollout of hotspots would come out toward the end of June.

According to him, the free Wi-Fi areas would be plazas, parks, public schools, government offices, hospitals, seaports, airports and the Light Rail Transit (LRT) and the Metro Rail Transit (MRT).

“The guaranteed speed is only 256 kbps. This is about half of the lowest available commercial subscription (offered by Internet service providers). We don’t want to hurt the industry, right? So we designed it that way,” he said.

He said the purpose of the project is not just to offer free Wi-Fi but to give the public a quality connection.

“We will do our best to ensure that the quality is good,” he said.