5 Pangasinan towns to offer free wi-fi

DAGUPAN CITY -Various public places in five Pangasinan towns will soon offer free wi-fi connection to the public through the “Juan Konek” program of the Department of Science and Technology-Information and Communications Technology Office (DOST-ICTO), bent on providing access to information, communication and technology.

Director Cheryl Ortega of DOST-ICTO Field Operations Office – Luzon Cluster 2, said the free wi-fi connection, which will be initially installed in selected schools and public places of the five towns in Pangasinan including Dagupan City, is in response to the implementation of the Television White Space (TVWS) technology.

Ortega said the program, which aims to enhance the internet accessibility for Filipinos in order to accelerate economic, social and education opportunities and reduce the digital divide, will cover all the 3rd to 6th class municipalities nationwide with a P1.4 billion fund.

The five municipalities in the province that will be provided with free wi-fi connection of the DOST-ICTO are the towns of San Jacinto, Laoac, Sta. Maria, Tayug and Natividad, she said.

Ortega disclosed that the public places such as public libraries, public schools, plazas, town hall, government hospitals and rural health units are the areas where the free public wi-fi shall be installed.

She said that in order to ensure availability of the service to as many users as possible, a fair usage policy will be implemented where as user registration will be subjected to three different levels with applied data limits per day.

The three registration levels are as follows: device identification with 50 megabite (MB) data per user per day; government passport or identification with allotted 100MB per user per day; and government digital certificate with 300MB per user per day or equivalent to one gigabyte per month.

“If the user consumed all the data allotted for him or her each day, data connection will be automatically stopped to give other user an opportunity to use the free internet connection,” Ortega said adding that the program would like to serve as many people as possible.

She added that the project, once fully implemented, will serve every user with 256 kilobits per second (kbps) of bandwidth per day regardless of their level of registration. (VHS/EMS/PIA-1, Pangasinan)