Carlo Jose Martinez, NTC deputy commissioner told reporters that the regulator will draft a memorandum circular on domestic Internet Protocol peering to improve the service quality of service providers and to reduce the cost of access, Martinez blamed high costs in the country to the lack of interconnection between ISPs.
Edgardo Cabarios, NTC director for the Common Carrier Authorization Department, said only three percent of the Internet traffic is directly transmitted within the country.
Ninety-seven percent of the country's Internet traffic is rerouted outside the Philippines, he said, thus making Internet costs more prohibitive and service less reliable.
The official expects Internet costs in the country to become more affordable as most of the telecom companies are investing more in their broadband infrastructures.
The regulator's move came after Globe Telecom Inc. pushed for an interconnection policy similar to what is required of voice call and text messaging service providers.
Globe said IP peering is similar to interconnection among local telcos for calls and text messaging, as it involves connecting subscribers and applications of one ISP to another.
Without this policy, IP traffic takes longer to route as data is sometimes sent overseas before reaching its target destination.
To customers, the experience leads to sluggish response times and lower service quality.
To ISPs, it is a waste of international capacity and resources when the transmission should be direct and not routed outwards especially when both the origin and destination are located in the Philippines.
The circuitous data routing also means added costs as the peering partner can charge a fee for transmitting the data.
Globe said domestic IP peering can be free-of-charge as data need not be pushed out of the country.
To date, Globe has been able to establish IP peering with other telcos and ISPs with sufficient bandwidth.
Not so with PLDT, which Globe said has refused to allow connection upgrades.
Globe underscores the importance of a domestic IP peering policy today as it calls on the NTC to safeguard a level playing field in the industry for the benefit of the consumers.
