Gov’t to add phases to National Fiber Backbone

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is set to complete two more phases of the National Fiber Backbone (NFB) by the first half as it seeks to make the internet accessible to more parts of the country.

DICT Secretary Ivan Uy said over the weekend that Phases 2 and 3 of the NFB project would be completed before the president delivers his State of the Nation Address this July.

READ: Marcos eyes internet access for all via National Fiber Backbone project

A fiber cable network serves as the digital highway for the transmission of data.

This was ahead of their schedule as the department expected deployment toward the end of this year initially, he said.

With the launch of these two phases, it is expected that internet access will improve in southern Luzon and certain parts of Visayas and Mindanao.

The government launched the first phase of NFB last year, which spans 1,245 kilometers and connects 14 provinces from Laoag, Ilocos Norte to Quezon City.

It also supports 3,000 free Wi-Fi sites, providing internet to about 750,000 residents in Ilocos region and Central Luzon and Metro Manila.

In total, NFB has six phases, which the government intends to complete by next year.

Once finished, internet penetration is expected to increase to 65 percent from the current 33 percent. The project also aims to lower the price of the internet to as much as $5 per Mbps (megabit per second).

Uy said they had secured a $288-million loan from the World Bank to build the other phases of NFB.

The DICT chief raised the need to ramp up the data infrastructure project in the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), whose adoption has been on the rise.

“AI is a gamechanger. It cuts across health, agriculture, education, everything. We need to be prepared,” he said.

Along with NFB, the DICT is also powering free Wi-Fi sites across the country, which is seen to benefit 9.8 million users across 1,401 cities and municipalities, including 3,040 geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas.

This program aims to improve internet connectivity in public places across the country, including hospitals, basic education institutions, state universities and colleges, airports and seaports.