Telcos buck interconnection of ISPs

Local telecommunications firms are doubtful that a government proposal to create direct links between Internet networks maintained by individual carriers will result in better services for the public.

At the moment, Internet traffic between subscribers of different Internet service providers (ISPs) has to be routed to servers overseas. This means that an e-mail from a source in the Philippines sent to a recipient in the same country would have to be routed to the United States or Hong Kong before being delivered.

The National Telecommunications Commission’s proposed Internet Protocol (IP) Peering rules aim to solve this by linking networks together, eliminating the need to have traffic routed abroad. This will result in faster connection speeds and improved user experience.

“Our goal is to keep Internet traffic between users in the country inside our national borders.… Traffic originating and ending in domestic points should not cross national borders,” NTC Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba said during a hearing on the IP-Peering proposal last Friday.

However, local telecommunications providers are lukewarm at best to the proposal, with some raising fears that the linking of networks, especially between big companies and start-ups, may have dire consequences.

“When you exchange traffic between networks, you will not have control between subscribers of different ISPs. This can result in viruses and malware (malicious software) being circulated to customers from subscribers of other networks,” said Sun Cellular counsel William Pamintuan. “There’s also a risk of unwarranted abuse of ISPs of networks of other providers.”

Pamintuan also said some companies, particularly smaller ones, may pass on the traffic on their networks to the providers they are peered with “instead of investing in new infrastructure.”—Paolo G. Montecillo