Hyperarchipelago - Philippine Internet History

"A de-urbanized, yet dependent periphery is established around the city. Effectively, these new suburban dwellers are still urban even though they are unaware of it and believe themselves to be close to nature, to the sun and to greenery."

-Henri Lefebvre (1968) in The Right to the City

In the contemporary landscape, the locus of media life has shifted decisively to the Internet, ushering in a new era of urban experience. This digital urbanity, as vibrant and toxic as its physical counterpart, saturates our consciousness with its intensity, evoking emotions, segmenting realities, and occasionally injecting humor into our digital interactions.

Drawing from Debord's (2020) incisive analysis:

"Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world has culminated in a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving"

We confront the spectacle—a realm where fragmented realities coalesce into a separate pseudo-world, captivating yet deceptive. This autonomous realm of images distorts life itself, ensnaring both viewers and manipulators alike in its fabricated narrative.

This spectacle becomes a site for the materialization of multiple ideologies which has remodeled itself after a distorted reality. Through Ruy's (2012) notion of object-oriented ontology, I would like to translate this spectacle, along with the geographical insinuations of a physical Philippines, to form an idea of the Philippine Internet as a hyperarchipelago - (hyper)terrestrial separations beyond belief.

For the digital native, the Internet has always been there, a comforting presence occasionally marred by a lost signal.

I. An Internetworking Primer

A. International Links

Under the Sea

Before we go into the historical details, which deal with a few technical terms, let us first discuss what the Internet physically looks like. Back in 2012, Eric Schmidt, who was then the chairman of Google, described the Internet as composed of the Three C’s: Computing, Communications, and Cloud. ‘Computing’ refers to the device that we use, whether it’s a desktop PC, a laptop, or a smartphone. ‘Communications’ refers to the telecommunications medium used to connect the device to the Internet, whether via telephone line, fiber optic cable, or wireless signal. Finally, ‘Cloud’ refers to the computers running the web servers that feed the devices with digital content.  The concept is analogous to that of a utility; e.g., an electric utility would have the lights at the home, the power lines running through the streets, and the generator at the power plant.  The main difference is that the Internet spans the globe, which means that some of those back end servers are abroad.  This is especially true of the Philippine Internet scene. At present, some of the most commonly accessed websites are those of Facebook in the US, Lazada in Singapore, Grab in Malaysia, and Moonton in China.

To allow access to these foreign websites, Internet Service Providers or ISPs connect to submarine cable landing points, of which there are no less than twenty in the Philippines.  The submarine cable is a fiber-optic cable capable of carrying terabits (trillions of bits) of data per second.  An example is the AAG or Asia-America Gateway submarine cable shown below, which is owned by both PLDT and Globe Telecom, as well as by AT&T and several other foreign telcos. The AAG submarine cable spans 20,000 kilometers and has landing points at La Union in the Philippines, Morro Bay in California, Changi North in Singapore, Mersing in Malaysia, and Lantau Island in China, among others. This submarine cable has a capacity or bandwidth of 1.92 terabits (trillions of bits) per second. To provide a perspective, assuming that the average fixed or mobile Internet subscriber’s bandwidth in the submarine cable’s covered countries is around 20Mbps, this one submarine cable alone has enough capacity to service 96,000 subscribers simultaneously.

B. Local Links

The Mesh

While ‘Communications’ across the ocean looks like a single thick pipe as shown above, ‘Communications’ on land resembles a mesh. The figure below shows a so-called WAN or Wide Area Network that demonstrates the concept of how the Internet works.  At each home, devices are connected to a Wi-Fi router. Meanwhile, at each business office, servers are also connected to an office router, also called an “edge router”. Note that the devices plus router inside the home already composes a small network called a Local Area Network or LAN. Likewise, the servers plus router inside the business office is also called a LAN. Each home router is connected by fiber optic cable to a street cabinet. Likewise, multiple edge routers are also connected by fiber to a street cabinet.

Multiple street cabinets, in turn, are connected to a so-called “headend” at a telco Switching Office. The name “switching office” hearkens to the day when telecommunication companies used switching equipment to interconnect individual telephone copper lines. There is usually one switching office per municipality or city. For instance, PLDT has switching offices in Pasig, Cainta, Marikina, Quezon City, etc.

Each switching office in turn connects to each other using a so-called Core Router that interfaces with a fiber-optic backbone network. From the diagram, we can see that the backbone network is in the form of a mesh, with each switching office’s Core Router connected to, not just one, but multiple peer core routers. The purpose of this design is redundancy. Assuming that an employee working from home is connecting to a business office, should one fiber-optic link go down, it is still possible for the signal to reach its destination via a different link. Eventually, via multiple “hops” over various linked routers, the signal reaches its destination. The entire network is called a Wide Area Network or WAN because it covers a wide geographical area.

Another characteristic of the Internet is that it sends its data to and fro in smaller pieces of data called “packets”. This is illustrated in the figure below. For instance, given that a browser requests a web server for a 1-megabyte file, before the web server responds with this data, the server first divides that file into packets of up to 64 kilobytes each, then sends each packet one after the other to the network. The job of the routers is to: first determine the shortest path in the mesh between the web server and the browser, then route the packets accordingly. To do so, the routers, ranging from the edge router at the business office, down to the core routers, and finally down to the Wi-Fi router at home, coordinate with each other, checking if each of them is up or down, and free or congested, to determine the shortest path.  Should a link go down at any time, the routers dynamically recompute the route. For each packet received by the device, the device sends an acknowledgment to the server. Should the server fail to receive an acknowledgment from the device, the server considers that particular packet lost and resends it. Finally, once the device receives the final packet, the device assembles the received packets back into the original 1-megabyte file. Due to this request-response-acknowledge method, the system is incredibly scalable and reliable. The more routers there are in the mesh, the faster and more reliable the network becomes.

The term used for the above method or “protocol” of data communications is “packet switching”, and the idea has been around since the 1960s, during the height of the Cold War, when scientists and engineers were thinking of a way to make a WAN robust enough to survive a nuclear attack.

Now imagine if the setup above were global; i.e., instead of just a few switching offices, all the switching offices of the world were interconnected into one giant mesh, with some links using submarine cables to span the oceans and seas. We would then have a gigantic WAN interconnecting multiple LANs; i.e., interconnected networks, hence the name “Internet”.  All computers at the edge of the mesh would have access to each other. The packet-switching specifications only require that the number of hops be limited to 255, which is more than enough even for two computers half-a-world apart.

Note that “the Fathers of the Internet”, electrical engineer Robert Kahn of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and computer scientist Vincent Cerf of Stanford University, designed their protocol called “Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol” or TCP/IP back in 1973. The protocol was adopted by the US in 1983. Yet, the Internet reached the Philippines only a decade after that, or in 1994. Below, we discuss why (and it’s likely not what you think).

II. Before the Internet in the Philippines

A. The Protocol Wars (1970s-1990s)

ITU X.25 vs IETF TCP/IP

TCP/IP was not the only global packet-switching standard from the 1970s to the 1990s. There were actually two competing camps. In addition to DARPA with its TCP/IP protocol, there was also the CCITT (Consultative Committee on International Telegraph & Telephone) with its X.25 protocol. The CCITT was the standardization body of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), which in turn was an agency of the United Nations (CCITT was later renamed to ITU-T in 1993). CCITT developed X.25 in 1974 and the standard was well-entrenched, especially in Europe.

Being largely a telecommunications standard, it is not surprising that CCITT X.25 was the first packet-switching protocol deployed in the Philippines. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, local telcos PLDT, Eastern Telecom, and Philcom, adopted the protocol and operated X.25 data networks in the country. Since CCITT also had e-mail standards: the CCITT X.500 DAP (Directory Access Protocol) and X.400 MHS (Message Handling System), which ran on X.25, the Philippines had global e-mail and file transfer even back then. The telcos allowed subscribers to access AT&T Mail, MCI Mail, and CompuServe, all of which also ran on X.25. Incidentally, these three American data services allowed X.25 subscribers to send e-mail via X.25-to-TCP/IP gateways to Internet recipients.

In 1988, CCITT also established a set of communication standards called ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) that allowed ordinary telephone copper lines to be repurposed for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, and data, with data, in this case, being via X.25 packets.  PLDT also offered ISDN services in the 1990s.

In 1990, CCITT and industry players Cisco, Nortel, and others developed a second-generation X.25 protocol, called Frame Relay, that improved on X.25’s speed by moving data integrity checks to the end nodes. PLDT also offered Frame Relay leased-line services, mainly to banks, in the 1990s until the early 2000s.

Collectively, the protocol standards of CCITT or ITU-T became more popularly known as Open Systems Interconnect or OSI after it was standardized in the 1980s by no less than the International Standards Organization or ISO.  In the mid-1980s, it was almost inevitable that OSI would become the global internetworking standard.

However, the problem with OSI was the bureaucracy it entailed since it required agreement among delegates who had competing high-stakes interests, delegates like computer companies and national telecom monopolies.  The result was a bloated standard that was too complex to implement quickly. In contrast, DARPA’s TCP/IP, through DARPA’s research task force which later became the Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF, by being largely insulated from politics, was able to quickly plow through the issues surrounding architecture, gateway algorithms, privacy, security, interoperability, and other concerns. Their slogan was “Rough concensus and running code.”  DARPA’s polarizing battle with CCITT was dubbed by the networking industry as “The Protocol Wars” (see “OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t”, Jul 29 2013, https://spectrum.ieee.org/osi-the-internet-that-wasnt ).

Starting in 1982, when the US Department of Defense adopted TCP/IP as the standard for its computer systems, DARPA promoted TCP/IP among computer manufacturers like IBM, DEC, and Sun, facilitating interoperability through DARPA’s annual “Interop” event. This later paid off in a big way when CERN in Europe purchased Unix machines for its LANs from 1984 to 1988. Among the machines that CERN acquired was a NeXT Unix workstation with both graphics and TCP/IP networking built in. 1n 1990, with this machine, CERN computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) on top of TCP/IP. In 1991, Berners-Lee released the World Wide Web application (web server and text-based browser source code), with HTTP and HTML as its foundation.

Two years later, in 1993, software engineers Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina of the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) developed a web browser called NCSA Mosaic on Unix X11/Motif that was the first in the world to display graphics inline with the text, and also the first to have intuitive icons for Back, Forward, Home, Bookmarks, etc. They released the Microsoft Windows version in September 1993, and three months later, it landed on the cover of the New York Times’ business section, with the article praising it as “an applications program so different and so obviously useful that it can create a new industry from scratch.” (see “NCSA Mosaic”, Jun 15, 2009, https://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/research/project-highlights/ncsa-mosaic/ )  The World Wide Web became the Internet’s “killer app”, turning TCP/IP into a de facto standard.

Henceforth, TCP/IP’s popularity soared, interest in OSI waned, and the Protocol Wars ended.  Thus, in 1994, with no more opposition to TCP/IP, the Internet was free to spread to other countries, including the Philippines.

OSI did not totally disappear, however. Today, we still see traces of CCITT X.25. For instance, the term “Cloud Computing” originated from the X.25 “Network Cloud”.  According to network engineer and author Uyless D. Black back in 1988, “[F]rom the point of view of an X.25 user, the network is a ‘cloud’. For example, X.25 logic is not aware if the network uses adaptive or fixed directory routing. The reader may have heard of the term ‘network cloud’. It is derived from these concepts.”

B. Power to the People: BBS

BBS SysOp and Caller (1970s-1980s)

Contrary to popular belief, it is actually possible to have data services even without a packet-switching data network. One way to do so is via peer-to-peer communications, where one user with a computer and modem uses the Plain Old Telephone System or POTS to send messages or files to a similarly equipped peer.  Programmer Ward Christensen utilized this setup in 1978 and called it a Bulletin Board System or BBS. The system became popular, and various BBS software packages were developed for different computer models (IBM PC, Macintosh, etc) and operating systems (MS-DOS, MS Windows, MacOS, etc), spreading throughout the world. By 1994, there were 60,000 BBSes serving 17 million people in the US alone. (see “BBS”, Jun 22 2023, https://vintage2000.org/bbs )

In a BBS system, one peer acts as the BBS System Operator or SySop, while the other peer acts as the BBS Caller. The BBS SysOp runs the BBS software (e.g., Renegade BBS on MS-DOS, Excalibur BBS on MS Windows) then waits for a caller. The BBS Caller uses a Terminal program (e.g., Terminate on MS-DOS, or the built-in HyperTerminal on MS Windows) to call up the BBS’s telephone number. Once the two modems finish doing their “handshake” (accompanied by tones on the modems), the caller is able to view the BBS’s main menu and from there, view and post messages on the publicly accessible bulletin board and download and update files.  Example BBS Caller and BBS SysOp screens are shown below.

The very first BBS in the Philippines went online in August 1986. It was the “First-Fil RBBS” operated by Dan Angeles and Ed Castaneda using the BBS package called RBBS v.14 on MS-DOS on an IBM PC-XT-clone computer equipped with a 1,200bps modem. It was semi-commercial, with a PHP1,000 annual subscription fee (which would be a hefty PHP8,000/year in 2024 money). It introduced Filipinos to online services like news, messaging, and file transfer. Some BBSs grew to have 8 to 10 telephone lines. (see Jim Ayson, “The State of the Net in the Philippines”, Internet World Philippines ‘96, Sep 23 1996)

BBS E-Mail: FidoNet (1983-1990s)

In 1983, Los Angeles-based artist and computer programmer Tom Jennings started work on his own BBS system which he called “Fido” because it was assembled from various parts, resulting in a “mongrel” system. Due to the high cost of long-distance calls to his fellow developers, he devised a way by which independent BBS systems could call each other autonomously to deliver e-mail in a manner called store-and-forward. He then packaged a Mailer software module that other BBS’s can incorporate into their own systems. The Mailer used a so-called nodelist of the names and telephone numbers of these BBS’s by which they can send and receive e-mails from each other, forming a WAN called “FidoNet”.

Each FidoNet node in the WAN is assigned a FidoNet Node Address of the form <Zone>:<Net>/<Node>.  The FidoNet zones are largely continent-based and there are six: Zone 1 for US & Canada, Zone 2 for Europe, Zone 3 for Australasia, Zone 4 for Latin America, Zone 5 for Africa, and Zone 6 for Asia.  Each zone is broken down into regional networks or nets, and each net has a number of FidoNet-member BBS systems or nodes.

FidoNet reached the Philippines in 1987 with the establishment of the Philippine FidoNet Exchange, which was composed of several BBSs in Metro Manila for local e-mail service. In 1991, the Philippine network connected to the international one. The figure below shows how the hierarchy looked like for some node BBSs in North Manila, Cebu, and, say, Stockholm.

With FidoNet, e-mail via BBS worked as follows: Assume that Alice, who frequents the Inner Sanctum BBS in North Manila (leftmost node in the diagram above), wants to e-mail Bob who frequents the Bjorn’s Nod BBS in Stockholm (rightmost node in the diagram above), she would then address her message as: “To: Bob  Address: 2:20/368”  Incidentally, the Inner Sanctum BBS was an actual BBS operated by Ronald Go and Albert Godinez at Greenhills, San Juan back in the  early 1990s. It had the Node Address 6:751/399 (Zone 6 for Asia, Regional Network 751 for North Manila, Node 399 for Inner Sanctum).

Starting from Inner Sanctum BBS, each BBS in Net 751 ‘North Manila’ would gather up all of the day’s outgoing e-mails, compress them into an ARC or ZIP file (which is critical for  dial-up telephone calls), call up the next BBS upstream, then send the compressed file to it. This next BBS decompresses the file, goes through the messages addressed to its own callers, adds its own set of outgoing messages, re-compresses the file again, then calls up the next BBS upstream. This continues until Net 751’s last BBS, ‘Majesty’ in our example, is reached.

Next, Majesty BBS, being the last BBS in Net 751, passes its compressed file to the next upstream regional network, which is Net 760 ‘Cebu’. Note that this now entails a long-distance telephone call from Manila to Cebu. Considering that long-distance calls cost around PHP15.00/min in the early 1990s (or around PHP75.00 in 2024 money), and that modems back then operated at only around 28.8Kbps, then file-sending, ignoring overhead, cost around PHP70/MB (1MB * 8bits/B * 1sec/28,800 bits * 1min/60sec * PHP15/min) or, considering overhead, around PHP100/MB in the early 1990s. This would be equivalent to around PHP500/MB in 2024 money. Assuming that the compressed batchfile of e-mails is around 5MB for all the callers in one regional network, then the cost of file-sending one-way would be PHP500/day in the early 1990s, or PHP2.5K/day in 2024 money.

Next, the remaining BBSs in Net 760 ‘Cebu’ would continue passing compressed batchfiles until the final BBS upstream in the net, I-Quest BBS in our example, is reached. Assuming that I-Quest BBS is the last node in the entire Zone 6 ‘Asia’, then it would have to pass the compressed file to the next zone, which in our example is Zone 2 ‘Europe’, Net 20 ‘Stockholm’, Node 133 ‘Skeleton Crew’. Since Skeleton Crew BBS is located abroad, sending the batch file would, this time, entail an IDD (International Direct-Dialing) call. Considering that an IDD call cost around $1.40/min in the early 1990s, or $3.20/min in 2024, the cost of sending the file from Cebu to Stockholm, ignoring overhead, is $6.48/MB (1MB *8bits/B * 1sec/28,800bits * 1min/60 * $1.40/min) or, considering overhead, around $8/MB or PHP213/MB ($8*PHP26.650/$1) in the early 1990s, or $18.42 or PHP1,032/MB in 2024 money. However, there may not be many Filipinos e-mailing someone in Stockholm; thus, the compressed batchfile may be smaller at, say, 2MB for all the callers in Net 760 ‘Cebu’. If so, then the cost of file-sending from Cebu to Stockholm would be PHP626/day (2MB*PHP213/MB)  in the early 1990s or PHP2,064/day (2MB*PHP1,032/MB) in 2024 money.

Finally, after one day, the e-mail of Alice in Manila reaches Bob in Stockholm. Bob would reply and the same batch-based process is followed. All in all, Alice would receive Bob’s reply after 2 days. This was actually acceptable back then, considering that the alternative was postal mail, which would sometimes take two weeks to a month for the reply to get back.

To cover the cost of long-distance and IDD calls, some BBSs charged subscription fees for the long-distance e-mail service. Local e-mails (e.g., within Metro Manila only or within Cebu only) remained free.

Also note that some FidoNet-member BBSs in the US were already connected to the Internet. Thus, some Filipinos have actually been able to access Internet e-mail since 1991 via FidoNet BBSs.

III. The Internet Reaches the Philippines

A. PhilNet Phase 1

PhilNet Phase 1: Preliminary Research (1990-1993)

In 1990, the head of the National Computer Center or NCC, Dr. William Torres, commissioned a committee study to see if it was possible to have an academic/research network to link Philippine universities and government institutions. The committee, headed by Arnie del Rosario of the Ateneo Computer Technology Center or ACTC, prepared a study of the Internet and received recommendations but no further progress was made. (see “The Day the Philippines ‘Discovered’ the World”, Apr 05 2014, https://newsbytes.ph/2014/04/05/villarica-the-day-the-philippines-discovered-the-world-2/ ). In 1992, Dr. Torres initiated informal discussions with the US National Science Foundation or NSF to bring the Internet to the Philippines (see “Mapua Featured Alumni: Dr. William Torres”, 2014, http://103.29.250.146/cl/alumni_writeup/33 )

One year later, in 1993, Arnie del Rosario brought the project to the attention of Glenn Sipin of the Philippine Council for Advanced Science & Technology or PCASTRD, which is one of the sectoral planning councils of the Department of Science & Technology or DOST. The DOST and a group of universities – Ateneo, De La Salle University, and UP – initiated the formation of PhilNet, the academic/research network envisioned in the original NCC study.

PhilNet Phase 1: Implementation (1993)

PhilNet was implemented in two phases: Phase 1, which was via dial-up connection, and Phase 2, which was via direct TCP/IP connection.  In 1993, for PhilNet Phase 1, the DOST provided a grant of PHP80,000 (around PHP452,000 in 2024 money) to allow the PhilNet consortium to operate a relay hub at Ateneo de Manila University connecting to the Internet via dial-up networking (Unix-to-Unix Copy or UUCP) to a gateway at Victoria Institute of Technology or VUT in Australia, which provided free mailbox service (from ”7 Years of Internet in RP”, Mar 27 2001, https://www.philstar.com/business/technology/2001/03/27/84510/7-years-internet-rp ), and with which AdMU had institutional ties (from “Ateneans Connect to the World”, Apr 14 2014, https://www.philstar.com/business/technology/2014/04/14/1312233/ateneans-connect-world ). In July 1993, with the test a success, other consortium members were able to access the Internet via the relay hub. With this, the DOST provided additional support and PhilNet was expanded to include other universities - University of Sto. Tomas in Manila,  St. Louis University in Baguio, University of San Carlos in Cebu, Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro, and Mindanao State University in Iligan City – as well as the DOST itself and the Industrial Research Foundation or IRF. Note that modem speeds at this period were around 28.8Kbps so that was the bandwidth of PhilNet Phase 1. (see “PHNet’s Vision”, Feb 01 2008, https://www.ph.net/about.html )

B. PhilNet Phase 2

PhilNet Phase 2: Setup (October 1993 to March 1994)

PhilNet Phase 2 began around  October 1993 when the DOST commissioned the Industrial Research Foundation or IRF (which is a foundation under the Industrial Technology Institute or ITDI, which in turn is one of the research institutes of the DOST) to handle the project implementation of PhilNet through a PHP12.5M grant (around PHP70 million pesos in 2024 money). IRF was made in charge of the finances because PhilNet, being a university consortium, had no legal identity by which to accept the grant. The project was then assigned by IRF executive director Cesar Santos to Dr. Rodolfo Villarica, who was one of the trustees of the foundation. (see “The Day the Country Got Hooked”, Mar 24 2001, https://www.ph.net/phildac/Appendices/Appendix%20L.pdf )

Dr. Villarica coordinated with various parties for the requirements of the project: (1) an ISP in the US, (2) an International Private Line or IPL with 64Kbps to link PhilNet to the ISP abroad, (3) local leased lines to connect the various consortium members to the IPL, and (4) routers to be used at the leased line endpoints. For the ISP, the consortium chose Sprint Communications’ SprintLink, which is a Tier 1 global ISP. For the IPL and leased lines, after evaluating five local telcos, they chose PLDT, which offered the IPL for $10,000/month (around $21,150/mo in 2024 money) and the leased lines for PHP130,000 per month (around PHP728K/mo in 2024 money). For the routers, they chose the Cisco 7000 router, priced at $70,000 (around $92,700 in 2024 money), for the main router at the IPL endpoint, and Cisco 2501 routers, priced at $30,000 each (around $63,400 in 2024 money), for the universities. The routers were purchased from Cisco’s authorized reseller in the country, Computer Network Systems Corp. or ComNet.

Sometime in 1993, Dr. Villarica’s friend Dr. John Brule, a Professor Emeritus in Electrical & Computer Engineering at Syracuse University in New York got wind of the PhilNet Phase 1 project. Being a visiting professor over the past 30 years to the University of San Carlos in Talamban, Cebu under the auspices of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization or SEATO, Dr. Brule thought that it would be a good idea to hold an Internet conference at USC to introduce the Internet to the Philippine academic community. However, since e-mail was the only Internet function available in the country at the time, he decided to call the event “The First International E-mail Conference”, and scheduled it for March 27 to 30, 1994.

In October 1993, Dr. Brule met Dr. Villarica, who happened to be visiting his son Marty, a graduate engineering student, at Syracuse University. Dr. Villarica mentioned that he is in charge of PhilNet Phase 2. Dr. Brule, pleasantly surprised, mentioned his planned conference to Dr. Villarica and asked if it is possible to do a live link-up at the conference itself. Being a Cebuano himself, Dr. Villarica also knew some of the people mentioned by Dr. Brule. Thus, despite the tight schedule, Dr. Villarica committed to the live connection in four months.

By the end of March 1994, preparations for “The First International E-mail Conference” were underway. Since invitations were sent, not just to members of the academe, but also to members of the PhilNet technical committee, the Philippine FidoNet Exchange, the Computer Enthusiasts & BBS Users group or CEBU, and commercial e-mail service providers, the event was highly anticipated by the Philippine cyberspace community.

PhilNet Phase 2: Launch (March 29, 1994)

Prior to the conference, Richie Lozada of Ateneo de Manila University flew in and installed a Cisco 4000 router at the endpoint of the PLDT leased line at USC. However, it still awaited the main Cisco 7000 router at the other end. During the conference itself, PLDT was still conducting tests with SprintLink during the past days on the IPL. Dr. Villarica thus anxiously followed up with ComNet in Makati for the router setup.

On the evening of March 28 1994, ComNet tech head Benjie Tan got the word from PLDT that the IPL was ready, and readily flew in from a training event in Hong Kong to install the router. At around 11:30PM, he made an IDD call to the SprintLink people in Stockton, California, asking them to be ready to configure the link in one and a half hours. He then disassembled the large and bulky Cisco 7000 to fit in his car and drove with the router to PLDT’s network center at Ramon Cojuangco Building at Ayala Ave in Makati.  At the network center, Benjie Tan reassembled the router, after which he and a PLDT technician mounted the router up the assigned rack space, connected the cables, then powered it up. After keying in the configuration parameters faxed by SprintLink earlier, he again coordinated with them via IDD. After SprintLink activated the port at the router at their side, Benjie Tan did a ‘ping’ to confirm that the connection was live, then coordinated with SprintLink for the static routing. At 1:15AM of March 29, 1994, the router work was finished and the Philippines was directly connected for the very first time to the Internet. Benjie Tan celebrated the momentous event with a large Magoo’s Pizza that he shared with the sleepy PLDT technician.

While waiting for daybreak, Benjie Tan played with the Internet connection since he had the full 64Kbps bandwidth to himself and it was a far cry from the usual 9.6Kbps bandwidth of a dial-up connection. He downloaded some files to his laptop then sent a message to the Usenet newsgroup ‘soc.culture.filipino’ on the connection (see figure below).

Back to the conference event, at around 5:30AM, Benjie Tan called up Dr. Villarica in Cebu to inform him of the connection completion. He then packed up his things and left PLDT at 6AM.  Meanwhile, Richie Lozada, after being informed of the connection, logged into the Cisco 4000 via a workstation at the USC auditorium and reconfigured it to connect to the Cisco 7000. He also reconfigured the conference presentation computer to connect it to the Internet. At 10:18AM, March 29, 1994, on the 3rd day of the conference, USC’s connection to the Internet was also completed, just as Dr. Brule was about to demonstrate live chat. As recounted by IT professional and journalist Jim Ayson, who was present at the event, Dr. Brule “executed the chat commands to chat with his son Mark over at Syracuse [University]. He connected. ‘We’re in,’ he announced.” Immediately after, “an announcement went out, possibly by Dr. Villarica. ‘This is not a dial-up connection. This is the real thing. Our link to the Internet is finally live.’ People were applauding like crazy.” (from “The Day the Country Got Hooked”).  The connection setup, as well as the router models used, are shown below.

In 1995, the following year, PhilNet was renamed PHNet to avoid a naming conflict with the “PhilNet” Philosophers’ Network, as well as to avoid a second naming conflict with the similarly named but totally unrelated project called “FilNet 2000”, which was an ill-fated satellite-based trade and industry network initiated by Congress and funded from the Countrywide Development Fund of fifty congressmen (from “The State of the Net in the Philippines”).

~ ~ ~ ༄.ೃ࿔࿐໋✧˖°.~ ~ ~

Soon after the country’s first direct connection to the Internet on March 29, 1994, things started to move quickly since the Internet’s commercial potential was not lost, especially on the BBS people who were already offering some form of online service like chat and e-mail. This was a global phenomenon. In the US, shortly within that year, in July 1994, a hedge fund manager named Jeff Bezos, seeing that the World Wide Web’s annual growth rate was 2,300%, launched an online bookstore named Amazon. (https://www.wired.com/1999/03/bezos-3/ ). Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the order of business was much more modest, namely, the establishment of Internet Service Providers or ISPs and basic user access to those ISPs.

I. User Internet Access

A. User Hardware & Software

WWW, PC, and the Hayes-compatible Modem (mid-1990s)

Internet access in the mid-1990s, not just in the Philippines but all over the world, was mainly via dial-up networking using a so-called “Hayes-compatible” modem. This was identical to BBS access, with the only difference being that the personal computer used had to be capable of running graphics-based Microsoft Windows, instead of text-based Microsoft MS-DOS, since the first popular web browser Netscape Navigator (released in December 1994) and the first popular Internet e-mail client Qualcomm Eudora (released in November 1993 (https://www.historytools.org/software/eudora-guide )), were Windows-based. There were Apple Macintosh and Unix workstation users in the Philippines back then but they were a small minority working in corporate. There were also users of text-based Internet applications like the Lynx browser and the Pine e-mail client but they were also a small minority working in academia.

“Computer Divisoria”: Virra Mall and Gilmore IT Hub (1990s to 2000s)

For computer hardware in the mid-1990s, Filipino users flocked to Metro Manila’s de facto IT hub or “computer Divisoria”, which was Virra Mall at Greenhills Shopping Center in San Juan (from  “Retro Computer Groups and Demoscene in the Philippines”, ca 2014,  (https://www.reddit.com/r/Philippines/comments/65hgru/retro_computer_groups_and_demoscene_in_the/ ). Virra Mall, which opened in the 1970s, began selling computer hardware, starting with Taiwanese Apple II+  and IBM PC-XT clones, as well as pirated software, in the mid- to late-1980s. By the 1990s, computer stores in Virra Mall were selling not just PC parts but also gaming consoles like the Nintendo FamilyComputer and Nintendo SNES.  Since the place was getting too crowded, in 1997, an enterpreneur named Peter Chua opened a computer shop PC Options (with PC being his initials) around 4 kilometers away at Gilmore Ave near Aurora Blvd.  PC Options, with its low prices and large volume of sales mainly to PC builders, was so successful that other computer shops like VillMan and PC Express opened branches there as well, turning Gilmore, by the early 2000s, into the next de facto IT hub (from “The ‘IT Hub’ at Gilmore Avenue”, Oct 06 2012, https://www.theurbanroamer.com/the-it-hub-in-gilmore-avenue/ ), even larger than the Virra Mall one. The Gilmore IT Hub holds that distinction to this day (as of 2024).

The Typical Filipino Household PC: Hardware & Software (late-1990s to early-2000s)

The mid-1990s was the time that Microsoft pivoted from multimedia to the Internet. Prior to this, Microsoft was focused mainly on its operating system, office suite, and consumer multimedia  products. The success of Netscape Navigator caught Microsoft flatfooted, forcing it to release on May 25, 1995 an internal memo entitled “The Internet Tidal Wave” (https://lettersofnote.com/2011/07/22/the-internet-tidal-wave/ ), which exhorted its employees to catch up with its competitors. By taking advantage of its installed base of around 4 million users of Microsoft Windows 3.1 (released in April 1992), and by pouring millions of dollars in the development of the Microsoft Internet Explorer (released in August 1995) browser and Microsoft Outlook Express (released in August 1996) e-mail client, and then by bundling these programs, sometimes unfairly (see “US Justice Department Proceedings”, Aug 1999, https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/704876/dl ), into the next incarnations of their operating systems, Microsoft Windows 95 (released July 1995) and Microsoft Windows 98 (released June 1998), Microsoft was indeed able to catch up, displacing their competitors’ applications. This explains why, by the late 1990s, the large majority of Internet users, not just in the Philippines but worldwide, all used so-called “Wintel” or Windows and Intel computers to surf the Internet.

Below is a typical pricelist of a computer store in Virra Mall dated February 2000. Note that pricelists, which were updated almost daily, were freely given out at IT-hub computer stores due to intense competition between the sellers. As shown below, Infonet Computers sold both Intel Pentium II- and AMD K6-based PCs. The specs of the typical PC for surfing the Internet was: Intel Pentium II 400MHz CPU, 64MB of RAM, 4MB videocard, 1.44MB 3.5-inch floppy diskette drive, 8.4GB hard disk, 40x-speed CD-ROM drive, 14-inch color monitor, mini-tower casing, keyboard, mouse, and speakers. The price was PHP28,000 (which, adjusted for inflation, would be around PHP60,000 in 2024 money). This did not yet include the modem, which, for a US Robotics 56Kbps External Modem, was priced at PHP5,500 (or around PHP12,600 in 2024 money). Thus, all in all, the hardware to surf the Internet cost PHP33,500 in 2000 money (or around PHP76,700 in 2024 money).  It is possible to get a lower price by assembling one’s own computer, and computer stores like Infonet Computers did sell components: motherboards, CPUs, memory modules, diskette drives, hard drives, monitors, etc. Note that an internal modem component like the Motorola 56Kbps Internal Modem sold for only one-fifth the price of an external one (like the Hayes 336 Message Modem shown below). One could also opt for a cheaper “paper-white” (monochrome) monitor instead of a colored one.

Note again that the above did not yet include the cost of software. Fortunately, Microsoft Windows 98 SE (released in June 1999), the license of which cost PHP3,400 in 2000 (or around PHP7,780 in 2024 money) as shown in the Infonet Computers pricelist above, already included the MS Internet Explorer 5 browser and MS Outlook Express 5 e-mail client. These applications were bundled into the operating system, making Netscape Navigator (which was free) and Qualcomm Eudora Pro (which was priced at around USD40 at the time (https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/1998/05/qualcomms-eudora-pro-email-40-wins-new-awards-leading-industry-publications )) redundant.

Shown below is a typical Filipino household PC ca 2000 running MS Windows 98. This unit was assembled using components purchased from Virra Mall.  By this time in the early 2000s, external modem prices have dropped because of the entry of Taiwanese brands like D-Link and Zyxel, which competed with established American brands Hayes, US Robotics, and Motorola. For instance, the D-Link DFM-560EL 56K V.92 Modem used with the unit (as shown below) was priced in 2000 at around PHP1,900 (around PHP4,350 in 2024 money) versus PHP5,500 (around PHP12,600 in 2024 money) for a US Robotics model.

Incidentally, one of the imported components used in the unit above had Filipino origins. The S3 ViRGE (Video & Rendering Game Engine) GPU was designed and manufactured by S3 Inc., which was founded by Filipino electrical engineer Diosdado “Dado” Banatao in 1989 in California as his third startup (hence the name S3), and was one of the first companies to create Windows graphics accelerator chips in the early 1990s (see “Oral History of Diosdado Banatao”, Computer History Museum, 2013, https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2014/07/102746746-05-01-acc.pdf )

Regarding software, the OS installed was MS DOS 6.2 plus MS Windows 98 (with a label on the License Key saying “Not Licensed Outside of the Philippines”). The Internet software installed were the bundled MS Internet Explorer 5 browser and the MS Outlook Express 5 e-mail client.

The World Wide Web arose in the mid-1990s right after the spread of home multimedia in the early-1990s. This was fortunate because the latter made CD-ROM drives popular and relatively inexpensive (like modem prices, CD-ROM drive prices went down from PHP5,500 in 1994 to around PHP1,900 in 2000). CD-ROM drives were first sold in the early-1990s as part of PC stereo sound systems, like the Creative SoundBlaster Pro, to allow PCs to play audio CDs and to read software like device drivers and videogames. However, CD-ROM drives were not initially intended to install the operating system itself.  The ubiquity of CD-ROM drives at this time made Windows 98 installation feasible for the home and office PC builder.  Incidentally, Windows 98 can be installed via diskette drive but it required thirty-nine 3.5-inch 1.44MB diskettes and sixty-six diskette-swaps (see “Installing the Rare Floppy Disk Version of Windows 98, in Real-Time”, Jun 15 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWuJxKtF3gk ), unlike Windows 3.1, which required only six diskettes and less diskette-swaps (from “WinWorld: Windows 3.0/3.1”, 2024, https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/31 ).

B. Software Piracy

Pirated CD-ROMs (mid-1990s to 2000s)

Users who still found the cost of the MS Windows software too expensive turned to pirated software, which was widely sold at bazaars (locally called “tiangge”) and stalls at malls and public markets. These pirated software were in the form of CD-ROMs and usually originated from Hong Kong, as shown by the Chinese labels on the covers. With the ready availability and low price of pirated software, and the lack of law enforcement to control its spread, software piracy became so rife in the Philippines that up to 77% of installed software in the country in 1998 was pirated (from “BSA Increases Software Piracy Reward to P1M”, Oct 05 2000, https://www.philstar.com/business/technology/2000/10/05/83730/bsa-increases-software-piracy-reward-p1-m ).

Back then and even today (as of 2024), computer stores at both Virra Mall and Gilmore Ave often install pirated software on PC units that are assembled on site. Shown below is an example of a pirated-software CD-ROM used for those installations.

Anti-Piracy Efforts: BSA and OMB (1990s to early-2000s)

To combat software piracy, Microsoft, Apple, Autodesk, Adobe, and other major software companies established the BSA or Business Software Alliance in 1988. The BSA, which continues to be active (as of 2024), offers rewards to those who report software piracy at companies, and then collects millions of dollars in damages from these offending companies. (from “After 20 Years, Critics Question the BSA’s Real Motives”, Jan  25 2008, https://www.baselinemag.com/enterprise-apps/After-20-Years-Critics-Question-the-BSAs-Real-Motives/ ). In the Philippines, the BSA coordinates with the the OMB or Optical Media Board (formerly the Videogram Regulatory Board), which is the country’s anti-piracy government agency (from https://www.omb.gov.ph/2021/07/22/press-release-bsa-launches-campaign-targeting-20000-design-and-engineering-firms-in-southeast-asia-to-use-licensed-software/). The OMB has regulatory authority over both magnetic and optical media products, namely: film, music, books, and software. (from “List of Commodities Regulated by the OMB”, Jan 2018, https://customs.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/mem-2018-02-011_List_of_Commodities_Regulated-by_the_Optical_Media_Board.pdf )

In 2000, the BSA increased its reward for anyone who reported corporate end-user software piracy from PHP100,000 to PHP1 million (around PHP230,000 to PHP2.3M in 2024 money). (from “BSA Increases Software Piracy Reward to P1M”, Oct 05 2000, https://www.philstar.com/business/technology/2000/10/05/83730/bsa-increases-software-piracy-reward-p1-m ). However, despite the BSA’s and OMB’s efforts, software piracy remained rampant during those years, as it still does today (as of 2024).

C. Open-Source Software (early-1990s to 2000s)

Unix and Linux (early-1990s to 2000s)

Back in the mid- to late-1990s, there was actually an alternative to both MS Windows and pirated software. The Linux operating system, which was started by a Finnish computer science student, Linus Torvalds, in 1992, is Free and Open-Source Software or FOSS, meaning that the code to build the operating system, as well as some applications running on top of it, is freely available to anyone who wishes to contribute to the software. The goal of the Linux volunteers at the time was to create a reverse-engineered version of the existing Unix operating system, which was popular in academia and at company datacenters since the 1970s. Note that Unix was a more robust operating system than Windows because it was originally designed for “multitasking” (multiple simultaneous tasks) and “multiuser” (multiple simultaneous users) computer systems, unlike Windows and MacOS, which were originally designed for individual “personal” computers.

Throughout the 1990s, the Linux project flourished due to the rise of the Internet, which allowed volunteers around the world to collaborate and contribute to the operating system. Note that the protocols running the Internet and the World Wide Web, like TCP/IP (Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) for internetworking, HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol) for webpage handling, POP (Post Office Protocol) for e-mail handling, and XMPP (eXtensible Messaging & Presence Protocol) for instant messaging were all born on Unix systems. Thus, when the first version of Linux, Linux 1.0, was released on Mar 14, 1994, it supported Internet connectivity right off the bat.

However, since it takes more than an operating system to make a computer usable, some volunteers compiled the operating system and open-source utilities and applications programs to form a complete usable system. Such a  compilation is called a distribution or “distro”. During the late 1990s, the most popular distros in the Philippines were (from most to least popular): (1) Red Hat Linux (released in May 1995) (2) Debian Linux (released in September 1993), and (3) Slackware Linux (released in July 1993). (from “Linux Introduction for Philippine Users”, Miguel Paraz, 1999, https://web.archive.org/web/20000119143052/http://home.linux.org.ph/faq-linux-intro.txt )

Slackware Linux is known to be the most optimized distro, producing the smallest installation. However, this is due to its design philosophy of keeping the system simple. Thus, users still need a working knowledge of the Linux command-line interface, which is beyond the skills of a typical Internet user.

Debian Linux is known to be the “freest” distro, being entirely community-supported, with the Debian Social Contract stipulating its commitment to software freedom, inclusion, and user autonomy. However, it has less predictable release cycles for bug fixes and enhancements because the support work is shouldered by the community.

Red Hat Linux is known to be the best supported distro in terms of user assistance, well-defined release cycles, and business software support. However, it’s support, outside of the community, is a paid commercial service.

Surprisingly, all three distros are still maintained thirty years later to this day (as of 2024). The only differences today are: (1) Red Hat Linux is now downloaded more in the form of its free community version called Fedora Linux, which is less stable but more cutting-edge and serves as a testing ground for the paid Red Hat Enterprise Linux product; and (2) Debian Linux is now downloaded more in the form of its commercial derivative called Ubuntu Linux, which has well-defined release cycles by its maintainer Canonical, but is a paid product when pre-installed on devices or used as part of a paid service (see “Understanding Ubuntu’s Licensing for Businesses”, Jan 10 2024, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/understanding-ubuntus-licensing-businesses-advantech-europe-hbwie/ )

Promoting FOSS in the Philippines (1999 to early-2000s)

In 1999, despite the number Linux users worldwide reaching 7 million, there were only around 200 active Linux users in the Philippines. To help promote the operating system in the country, IPhil Communications, an ISP, organized the tech event “Linux ‘99: The First Philippine Open-Source Conference” on June 9-11, 1999 at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati. Speakers included Brian Baquiran of ISP EvoServe, who talked about shell scripting (from https://web.archive.org/web/20001003062746/http://www.baquiran.com/linux/ ), and William Yu of Ateneo de Manila University, who talked about scientific computing using so-called Beowulf clusters (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=253e0680d1705ace1965555f2a9c18f2bbd6e3ae ).

During these installfests, the typical newbie’s PC was set up to use, say, Red Hat Linux 6.2 (released in April 2000) which, like Windows 98, was available as a CD-ROM set and also as ISO images (CD-ROM files) freely downloadable from Red Hat’s FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Server. This particular distro already contained the Netscape Communicator 4.7.2 program which is an Internet suite containing both the Netscape Navigator browser and the Netscape Messenger e-mail client. The distro also contained a full office suite Sun Microsystems StarOffice 5.2, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999 from a German company called StarDivision, and which was later open-sourced by Sun in July 2000 as OpenOffice (which is the forerunner of LibreOffice today in 2024) (from “Red Hat Europe Teams Up with Sun Microsystems to Offer StarOffice 5.2 for the Total Open Source Solution”, July 31 2000, https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/72 ). The office suite includes the Writer word processor, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentation program, and the Base database (which are the open-source counterparts of MS Office’s Word word processor, Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation program, and Access database).

In October 2001, to further promote open-source software adoption in the country, the Open Source Group of the Advanced Science & Technology Institute or ASTI (which is the Department of Science & Technology’s R&D institute that specializes in microelectronics and Information & Communications Technology or ICT), initiated the Bayanihan Linux project which aimed to create a national Linux distro small enough to fit on one CD-ROM but functional enough to cater to the needs of Filipinos at home, school, SMEs, and government agencies. Bayanihan Linux 1.0 (released in Jun 2002) was based on Red Hat Linux and included a word processor called AbiWord. Later versions, like Bayanihan Linux 4.0 (released in Mar 2007) was based on Debian and included the browser Mozilla Firefox 2.0, the e-mail client Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5, as well as a full office suite, OpenOffice.org  2.1 (from “DistroWatch: Bayanihan Linux 4”, Mar 28 2007, https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=04138 ). Note that Firefox and Thunderbird are the open-source successors of Netscape Navigator and Netscape Messenger after Netscape released Netscape Communicator as open-source in March 1998 (from “Freeing the Source: The Story of Mozilla”, 2000, https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/netrev.html ). OpenOffice.org, on the other hand, and as mentioned above, is the open-source successor of StarDivision StarOffice when Sun Microsystems released it as open-source in July 2000.

For government use, the Bayanihan Linux distro also included OpenOffice.org document templates “for common government forms for easy filling out and printing.” (from “Bayanihan Linux 5 for Government”, Apr 26 2011, https://linuxlandit.blogspot.com/2011/04/bayanihan-linux-is-complete-open-source.html ).  Releases were accompanied by installfests and trainings, initially at the ASTI office in Quezon City then at malls nationwide. (from “Bayanihan Linux Newsletter”, Oct 09 2003, hhttps://web.archive.org/web/20031012115219/http://bayanihan.gov.ph/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=6 )

Unfortunately, DOST-ASTI ceased supporting Bayanihan Linux after 10 years of work. The final release was of Bayanihan Linux 5.4 in April 2011, which was ironically a month before the distro was mentioned by Sen. Manny Villar as a shining example of “the viability and advantages of FOSS” in the country (from “Senate Bill No. 2821: An Act Promoting the Development and use of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) in the Philippines”, May 17 2011, https://legacy.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/112569565!.pdf ). One possible reason is the lack of resources in deploying a national distro; for instance, “Bayanihan suffers from very slow regional servers with no mirrors available.” (from “Bayanihan Linux 5 Kalumbata: A Glimpse into the Past”). Another possible reason is plain loss of interest, considering that there were literally hundreds of Linux distros to choose from at the time, some with much better community support than others, and which were already fine as they were for the Philippine market; for instance, the standard English-language versions of Fedora and Ubuntu, which both included Firefox, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice,  were already perfectly usable to Filipino users (from “Bayanihan Linux OS”, Jun 24 2013, http://filipinoinventionsanddiscoveries.blogspot.com/2013/06/bayanihan-linux-os.html ).

All in all, the efforts made by PLUG, DOST-ASTI, and other FOSS supporters in the country were made partly to address the problem of rampant software piracy in the country. As put by PLUG’s FAQs, “Q. Why should I switch to Linux?  A. Because the license of such type of software would sit well with Filipinos' penchant of copying almost anything (literally and figuratively).  No guilt feelings, no IPR violation with  copyright notices used as ‘free passes’." (from “Linux Introduction for Philippine Users”, Miguel Paraz, 1999, https://web.archive.org/web/20000119143052/http://home.linux.org.ph/faq-linux-intro.txt ).  However, despite years of promoting FOSS, software piracy rates remain high at around 60% (from “PH Firms Urged to Use Licensed Computer Software”, Oct 28 2019, https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1084405 ).

Some possible reasons to explain this are: (1) FOSS promotion is difficult; installfests alone are very tedious affairs since installing Linux on a newbie’s desktop PC requires bringing along your entire system, which includes CPU, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and cables; installation on a laptop is easier but not much so because returning the backed up data to the computer, and installing and configuring the particular applications desired by the newbie to access that data (documents, books, music, videos, etc) still takes hours of work by community volunteers; (2) FOSS adoption is difficult; this holds true especially for users who have been using MS Windows and MS Office for years; open-source equivalents like Ubuntu and LibreOffice are up to the task but the different user interfaces confuse the newbie no end; it takes immense effort, almost to the level of learning to play a musical instrument, on the part of the newbie to adjust; and (3) FOSS support is difficult; this is especially true regarding peripherals like printers and scanners, which sometimes have no device driver support for FOSS, thereby requiring manual installation of workarounds to get them to operate.  Nothing short of a government mandate that all homes, schools, and offices switch to FOSS (i.e., forced adoption) can possibly make FOSS replace proprietary software in the country, but that would be unconstitutional.

However, there are other things at play in the battle against software piracy in the country. First, software vendors like Microsoft have found a way to ensure that license keys are used only once by the intended user: right during software installation, the installation software connects via the Internet to the vendor’s server to verify in real-time that the license key is still unused, or, if used, that the software is simply being reinstalled on the original device. This  directly acts against stolen license keys. Second, there are now online versions of common productivity software, like Google Docs and Google Sheets, that provide usable office functionality. This makes traditional office suite software, like MS Office, redundant. Third, ever since the mid-2010s, mobile phones have grown in computing power and network speed, allowing users to shift to mobile devices to surf the Internet. This makes traditional devices, like desktops and laptops, redundant, and also does away with software piracy since the Internet software applications (or apps) are already paid for when one purchases the mobile device.

D. Computer Shops

Computer shops were another alternative available to Filipinos back ca 2000 for access to the Internet. If one cannot buy the hardware and software, or choose to use free open-source software (instead of directly pirating commercial software), then the only other option was to rent the hardware and software.

PC-Rental Shops (late-1980s to ca 1997)

Internet cafes arose from PC-rental shops that first appeared ever since PCs became affordable to the general public. The IBM PC itself was first released in 1981 but the price was still astronomical even some years later. For instance, the price of an original IBM PC-XT by the mid-1980s was PHP135,000 (around PHP961,000 in 2024 money), which was already the price of a car. Prices only started to go down after Compaq developed the first IBM PC clone, the Compaq Portable (released in March 1983). However, it was not until the Taiwan-made clones appeared around 1987 that prices really dropped. The price of an IBM PC-XT clone in 1987 was “only” around PHP40,000 (around PHP285,000 in 2024 money). This, however, was low enough for an entrepreneur to rent out a unit and recover his investment, hence the beginning of the PC-rental business.

By 1992, the price of an IBM PC-AT clone (with an Intel 80286 CPU overclocked from 8MHz to 16MHz, and with 2MB RAM) had gone down to PHP30,000 (around PHP171,000 in 2024 money). Properly maintained, a PC clone subjected to public use (and abuse) had a life of around 3 years, since only the moving parts – keyboards and diskette drives – needed to be replaced annually. Also, for the PC-rental shop, there was no such thing as software expense because the customers themselves brought their often pirated software (Microsoft MS-DOS 3.3, MicroPro WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3) with them on 5-1/4” diskettes. Thus, there was no MS Windows on hard disks to worry about.  Customers included students writing term papers, professionals working on financial statements, and kids playing videogames. Videogames back then were simply arcade games; multimedia was unheard of at the time.

PCs were rented out at PHP15 (around PHP85.50 in 2024 money) per hour, and dot-matrix printing was priced at PHP10 (around PHP57 in 2024 money) per page, which may sound expensive but was actually competitive with the rates of Recto Avenue services for typewritten term papers.  Thus, a typical PC-rental shop with around 15 computers and which opened from 9AM to 9PM was expected to have gross sales of PHP5,000 (around PHP28,500 in 2024 money) per day. Typical monthly gross sales amounted to more than PHP150,000 (around PHP855,000 in 2024 money) per month. Considering the 3-year life of the equipment and the fixed costs from rent and employee salaries, the gross profit ratio was a good 32%. This made the early-1990s the heyday of the Filipino PC-rental industry, and shops large and small, and mostly Chinese-Filipino-owned, proliferated at university belts.

The rise of Microsoft Windows 3.1 in the country around 1994 affected the PC-rental industry adversely because it rendered all of the old (IBM PC-XT-class and PC-AT-class) computers obsolete. This time, PCs required a fast processor (at least a 33MHz Intel 486DX), at least 4MB of RAM, a hard disk, a mouse, speakers, and higher-resolution VGA monitors, which all contributed to pushing the price of the basic PC back to the early clone days of PHP40,000 (around PHP224,000 in 2024 money). Dot-matrix printers also fell victim to the change because MS Windows’ proportional-typeface required high-resolution inkjet and laser printers, which in those days still cost PHP12,000 and PHP60,000 (around PHP67,000 and PHP336,000, in 2024 money), respectively.

Software expense also started to appear for the PC-rental shop because software piracy came under attack via license-key-based OS installation, where each individual Microsoft Windows 95 CD-ROM, which was priced at around PHP5,000 (around PHP25,000 in 2024 money), had a personalized key matching the hologrammed one on the license certificate. There were also legal charges from lawsuits filed by the BSA anti-piracy body (home users were somewhat protected from this but not PC-rental shops, considering the reward money offered by the BSA to those who reported corporate offenders).

Thus, by around 1995, a typical PC-rental shop had ten DOS-based PCs and two Windows-based PCs, with the DOS PCs still rented out at PHP15/hr (around PHP75/hr in 2024 money) but with the Windows PCs rented out for as much as PHP40/hr (around PHP200/hr in 2024 money).

However, around 1997, with the rise of Windows-based Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel displacing DOS-based MicroPro Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3, PC-rental shops had no choice but to switch to all-Windows-based PCs. Fortunately, by this time, Taiwanese (and now even Chinese) computer manufacturers had caught up again with the demand for Windows PCs, allowing the price of the typical Windows PC (a 166MHz Intel Pentium with a staggering (at the time) 32MB of RAM and a 1.2GB hard drive) to fall again to the PHP30,000 (around PHP105,000 in 2024 money) level. Surprisingly, considering inflation, these new Windows-based computers turned out to be even cheaper than the DOS-based ones from 5 years prior.

Thus, by around 1997, a typical PC-rental shop had ten Windows PCs, instead of the fifteen DOS PCs from 5 years ago. The decrease was mainly due to falling demand for rented PCs, considering that households could, by that time, afford to buy Windows PCs themselves. Windows PC rental rates fell to PHP25/hr (around PHP88/hr in 2024 money), which, factoring in inflation, was around the same rate for DOS PCs 5 years ago. Although peso sales in 1997 were much higher than in 1992, the equivalent inflation-driven rise in operating expenses (rent and employee salaries) caused the gross profit ratio to drop to 25% (from 32% five years ago).

LANs at PC-Rental Shops (ca 1997 to ca 2000)

By around 1998, another technical development took place. Videogame developers, taking advantage of Microsoft Windows 95’s and Windows 98’s built-in TCP/IP networking support, started producing multiplayer videogames, where players on a LAN (Local Area Network), or even across the Internet, can play against each other. However, households were rarely wired for local-area networking, so PC-rental shops  saw LAN Multiplayer Gaming as another service that they could offer.

Thus, some PC-rental shops opted to network their own Windows PCs using 10Mbps LAN hubs, network interface cards, and LAN cables (see below). A 12-port LAN hub typically cost around PHP20,000 (around PHP56,000 in 2024 money), while a small 4-port LAN hub cost around PHP6,000 (around PHP17,000 in 2024 money). A network adapter card cost around PHP2,500 (around PHP7,000 in 2024 money). There was also the cost of cabling. However, with the LAN in place, a group (or “barkada”) of customers would come and boisterously play multiplayer videogames at PHP20/hr (around PHP56/hr in 2024 money), which was good return for the investment. Although commonplace today (in 2024), back then, the experience of players engaging each other in real-time shoot-em-up games in virtual arenas was very novel. These customers were essentially enjoying LAN parties, long before the phrase became popular.

The Arrival of the Internet at PC-Rental Shops (ca 1998 to ca 2000)

Soon after the establishment of PhilNet Phase 2 (discussed earlier) in March 1994, Philippine ISPs started setting up shop. By 1998, ISPs like Mozcom and Infocom have popularized the Internet to Filipinos. The only problem for PC-rental establishments was that the common home setup of having one telephone line and one dial-up modem per PC, which hearkened back to the BBS days, was not commercially feasible for a shop with multiple PCs (incidentally, there was never a time when a PC-rental shop offered BBS access, even in the heyday of such shops in the early-1990s, perhaps because BBS content was never as compelling as Web content). Thus, some PC-rental shops offered only one or two Windows PCs for Internet access.

Some other shops, on the other hand, were technically savvy enough to find a solution to the problem. Through the LAN setup discussed above, a way was found to allow all networked PCs to surf the Internet through only one PLDT, BayanTel, or Digitel telephone line. The trick was to use the Internet-connected PC as a “Proxy Server” (aka “HTTP Proxy”), where the other PCs connected to the Proxy Server, which in turn proxied for them when connecting to a website. When the Proxy Server PC connected to an ISP, it receives a so-called IP Address from that ISP. During a PC-rental shop’s use of a Proxy Server, a website like Yahoo.com saw only a single IP address, with multiple browsing sessions under that IP address, not knowing that behind those browsing sessions were different PCs, each independently surfing. The setup is shown below.

Note that the Proxy Server did not need to be a dedicated PC. The designated PC was still capable of running a customer’s browser. However, for very heavy loads, a dedicated PC was used. The dedicated PC was usually an older PC (e.g., 66MHz Intel 486DX2) running an older OS (e.g., Windows 95).  However, even with a dedicated Proxy Server and a very fast modem, the dial-up line’s 56Kbps (or 0.056Mbps) bandwidth remained a bottleneck. Note that this 56Kbps bandwidth (or sometimes just 33.6Kbps bandwidth, depending on the modem) had to be shared among the PCs in the LAN. For a small shop with four PCs, each would effectively get only 14Kbps (or 0.014Mbps) of bandwidth. It was not unusual to wait for 30 seconds for a webpage to download.

The Transition from PC-Rental Shop to Computer Shop (ca 1998 to ca 2000)

With the introduction of Internet service, the PC-rental shop became known by other names: Internet cafe, cybercafe, or just plain computer shop (note that the term “compshop” was not yet in use at the time).

Even with the low bandwidth, people flocked to computer shops because of another technical development: webmail.  By this time, people started to get their own e-mail addresses from Hotmail.com (launched in July 1996; acquired by Microsoft in 1997), RocketMail.com (launched in 1996; acquired by Yahoo in 1997, becoming YahooMail), and Bigfoot.com (launched in 1995; e-mail forwarding service for ISP-agnostic e-mail addresses). With a webmail address, an Internet user no longer needed to have his or her own PC with an e-mail client to access e-mails, and a hard disk to store those messages. One simply had to go to any computer shop to check e-mail.  For those who cannot afford their own PCs, webmail was the only option available for e-mail service.

For users who synchronized their e-mail sessions with their loved ones abroad, it was even possible to use e-mail, whether via e-mail client or via webmail, as a rudimentary chat service, with both parties taking turns sending messages and waiting a few minutes for the reply. (Note that there was no browser-based chat service (like Discord today in 2024) back then ca 2000. There were chat services like Mirabilis ICQ (launched in November 1996), Yahoo Messenger (launched in March 1998), and Hypernix Gooey (launched in June 1999 (from “Every Web Site a Chat Room”, Jun 14 1999, https://www.wired.com/1999/06/every-web-site-a-chat-room/ )) but they required installation of a chat client on one’s PC. Unlike e-mail with webmail, chat did not have a “webchat” service at the time.)

Computer shops and webmail were significant especially because of the large number of Filipinos working as OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers).  To communicate with loved ones abroad, the only other options available to a Filipino were: (1) IDD telephone calls at USD1.30/min (or USD2.46/min or PHP143.70/min in 2024 money) (from “Competition Forces PLDT, BayanTel to Cut Int'l Call Rates”, Jan 21 2000, https://www.philstar.com/business/2000/01/21/101394/competition-forces-pldt-bayantel-cut-intl-call-rates ) (international SMS was also an option but was not guaranteed since it depended on the establishment of a roaming agreement with a telco partner in the other country), and (2) international mail or airmail, which cost around PHP80 (or around PHP206 in 2024 money) in postal stamps and took around 1 to 2 weeks to reach the recipient.  Compare this with Internet access and webmail at PHP40/hr (around PHP112/hr in 2024 money) at a computer shop.

Proliferation of Computer Shops (ca 1999 to ca 2000)

Around 1999, due to the rapid increase of Internet users worldwide (from 11 million in 1994 to 150 million in 1999), Windows PC production reached unprecedented economies of scale, resulting in a massive drop in computer prices (see table below).

Comparison of Computer Parts and Internet Service Prices in 1996 and in 1999. The drop in computer parts prices were due mainly to the entry of Taiwanese and Chinese brands in the market. The drop in Internet access price was due to competition among literally hundreds of Philippine ISPs at the time.

Because of this, there was a proliferation of small mom-and-pop computer shops, mostly with just around five PCs. It was not unusual to find these shops in neighborhoods even outside Metro Manila. For instance, the Parola town proper area of Cainta, Rizal, was home to at least four such shops in 1999 (Noah Computer, St James Bookstore, eMate, and PC Tambayan).  Below is a leaflet advertising a computer shop called PeeZee Station in Taytay, Rizal in 1998.  Note that it offered both PC gaming and PlayStation gaming services, with the latter using large CRT television sets purchased secondhand at Caloocan City.

Also shown below are pictures of another computer shop, called NetSharks in West Ave., Quezon City. NetSharks opened in April 2000 and rented out eight PCs. Their LAN  and Proxy Server used a Hong Kong-made SureCom hub and a Singapore-made Aztech 56K modem. Their total investment amounted to PHP125,000 (around PHP300,000 in 2024 money) in cash and existing furniture and appliances, including a second-hand Kelvinator refrigerator for what was then a new feature in computer shops: refreshments.

II. ISP

A. The First Philippine ISPs (1994 to 2000s)

MosCom (1994)

As mentioned above, soon after the establishment of PhilNet Phase 2 in March 1994, Philippine ISPs started setting up shop. Technically, PhilNet was an ISP since it did provide Internet service to member academic institutions. However, it was (mainly) not commercial. The country’s first commercial ISP was MosCom or Mosaic Communications, Inc. (not to be confused with US-based Mosaic Communications Corp., which developed the first PC browser and was renamed Netscape Corp. in Nov 1994). MosCom was established in August 1994 (http://www.msc.edu.ph/wired/top/gan.html ) by ComNet, which was the supplier of the Cisco routers used in the PhilNet program (from Jim Ayson’s “The State of the Net in the Philippines”, Sep 1996). The founders of MosCom were the “Father of the Philippine Internet” himself, Dr. William Torrres, and PhilNet founding member Dr. Willy Gan who, in late 1993, was involved in the design and implementation of the academic network. It launched its ISP service in August 1994 (from “Pinoy Internet: Philippines Case Study for ITU”, March 2002, https://www.itu.int/itudoc/gs/promo/bdt/cast_int/79479.pdf ). Around March 2004, MosCom renamed itself MozCom.

MosCom’s initial setup in August 1994 is shown below. The system used dial-up networking since DSL  service was still years into the future (PLDT launched DSL only in April 2001). Note that MosCom’s gateway to the Internet was initially via PhilNet Phase 2, which had a 64Kbps IPL (International Private Line) line to Sprint in the US, but eventually, MosCom procured two IPLs of its own: a 256Kbps IPL to Sprint and a 2.048Mbps E1 line to MCI. MosCom used both links for load-sharing as well as for redundancy (from “MosCom Company History”, Jan 1998,

https://web.archive.org/web/19980125194332/http://www.mozcom.com/company/profile.html ).

In this setup, the ISP PoP has contracted with the telco for a Trunk Line, which is a single cable carrying multiple telephone lines. The Trunk Line extends from the telco’s Switching Office to the ISP PoP’s Private Automated Branch Exchange or PABX. The PABX splits the Trunk Line’s telephone lines and distributes them among the modems in the Modem Bank. The Modem Bank is a pool of modems which receive the dial-up connections of subscribers. The modems connect to a Network Access Server or NAS which in turn communicates with the Authentication, Authorization, & Accounting Server or AAA to verify the customer’s Username & Password against the data stored in the User Accounts Database. Once the customer is verified, TCP/IP packets are free to flow from the customer’s PC to the Internet.

The ISP has also contracted with the telco for a Leased Line, which is a single cable carrying a data line, which in the mid-1990s ranges in size from 64Kbps to 2.048Mbps. The Leased Line extends from the ISP PoP’s Edge Router to the PoP’s Gateway Router, which resides at the telco’s Network Center. From here, the Gateway Router is connected to the foreign partner telco’s router abroad, for connection to the Internet.

Telco Deregulation, the Legitimization of ISPs, and the Internet Goldrush (1993-1995)

When MosCom launched its service in August 1994, it operated in a gray area because it was acting like a telecommunications company (since the Internet is a communications medium) even if it did not possess a telco’s congressional franchise. This made the company open to legal attacks by established telcos.

The early- to mid-1990s was a time of telco deregulation in the Philippines, since prior to this, the country’s telecommunications industry was dominated by PLDT, which was a monopoly. On July 12, 1993, then-President Fidel Ramos signed into law Executive Order 109, “Policy to Improve the Provision of Local Exchange Carrier Service” (https://lawphil.net/executive/execord/eo1993/eo_109_1993.html ), which incentivized new telecom companies entering the telco industry with lucrative licenses for IDD and cellular services under the condition that part of their earnings would be used to subsidize the rollout of telephone lines in underserved areas of the country. These areas are called “local exchange service areas” and they are designated by the National Telecomunications Commission or NTC.  Under the law, in this Service Area Scheme, each new International Gateway Facility or IGF operator is required to install 300,000 new lines, while each new Cellular Mobile Telephone Service or CMTS operator is required to install 400,000 new lines (see “Opening Up the Philippine Telecommunications Industry to Competition”, May 2000, https://regulationbodyofknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Aldaba_Opening_Up_the.pdf ). For instance, Smart Communications, Inc. (launched in May 1993) was granted both CMTS and  IGF licenses in return for subsidizing the rollout of 700,000 telephone lines in their designated service areas Ilocos Region, Central Luzon, and South Metro Manila (from “Smart Bares ‘Substantial’ Landline Rollout Compliance”, May 13 2000, https://www.philstar.com/business/2000/05/13/99017/smart-bares-substantial-landline-rollout-compliance ).  EO 109 addressed the issue on the entry of new cellular and IDD companies but not on the entry of new ISPs since the Internet was largely unheard of in the country at the time.

In 1995, the Philippine government provided clarity on the issue. On March 1, 1995, Pres. Fidel Ramos signed into law Republic Act No. 7925, “An Act to Promote and Govern the Development of Philippine Telecommunications and the Delivery of Public Telecommunications Services” (https://lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1995/ra_7925_1995.html ). The then-new law stated, “Section 11. Value-added Service Provider. - Provided that it does not put up its own network, a VAS provider need not secure a franchise. A VAS provider shall be allowed to competitively offer its services and/or expertise, and lease or rent telecommunications equipment and facilities necessary to provide such specialized services, in the domestic and/or international market in accordance with network compatibility.”  Since Internet access can be considered a Value Added Service or VAS, the law made clear that ISPs were legitimate companies.

With the lingering doubt on the legitimacy of ISPs erased, there was a sudden influx, dubbed “The Internet Goldrush”, of new ISPs in the industry. By August 1995, just a few months after the enactment of RA 7925, there appeared: Infocom, IPhil Communications, Tridel Net, Virtual Asia, Cybernet Live, and others (see “The State of the Net in the Philippines”, Sep 1996).  According to Emer Rojas, president of NetSurfers Club (an ISP),  a few years later, by 1997 there were 120 ISPs, then by 2000 there were 280 nationwide (from Carey De Guzman, et al “Challenges Facing ISPs in the Philippines”, May 2000).

The IPPs

The first ISPs initially served just the client-side (or browser side) of the Internet, providing dial-up access. By 1995, there appeared the so-called IPP or Internet Presence Provider companies specializing in web hosting and web design, thereby also serving the server-side (or web server side) of the Internet. The IPP caters to clients who wish to have a “presence” on the Internet by having their own websites. (see “The State of the Net in the Philippines”).

An ISP can become an IPP simply by hosting clients’ webservers in the ISP PoP datacenter. It is also possible to be a pure IPP, where the IPP PoP datacenter contains only client webservers. Both setups are shown below.

The job of the IPP is mainly to host the webservers of usually Small-to-Medium Enterprises or SMEs, since small companies may not have the IT expertise to maintain their own servers, LAN switches, and routers, and just want to have their own websites. The IPP is therefore responsible for coding, hosting, and maintaining the website.

It is also possible that the SME owner knows how to code in HTML and thus be able to maintain the website on his or her own. In this case, the IPP provides access to the SME’s webserver via a partner ISP (usually the IPP’s parent company), where the SME’s webmaster dials-in for access then uses an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program to update the website’s HTML files.  After this, the SME’s own customers, may also dial-in for access and view the SME’s website on their own browsers.

ISP & IPP Growth (1996-1997)

In the mid-1990s, an ISP like MosCom could charge from PHP65/hr to a high PHP80/hr (around PHP364/hr to PHP448/hr in 2024 money), depending on the area, for Internet access (from ”7 Years of Internet in RP”, Mar 27 2001, https://www.philstar.com/business/technology/2001/03/27/84510/7-years-internet-rp ). Thus, from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, MosCom was commercially successful. By 1997, it was able to achieve nationwide coverage by expanding to seventy Points of Presence or PoPs, where the PoP connects to the telco serving that particular area (from The 'World-Wide' Revolutionaries, Sep 10 2006, https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2006/09/10/357304/145world-wide146-revolutionaries). This setup is shown below.

The growth of local ISPs and IPPs was accompanied by a rise in Internet users. The country’s Internet subscriber base rose from around 40,000 users in late 1996 (from “The State of the Net in the Philippines”), to around 400,000 in 2000 (from “Challenges Facing ISPs in the Philippines”). However, considering that the country’s population in 2000 was 76 million, this meant that the 400,000 subscribers represented less than 1% of the population at the time. One possible reason was that the cost of Internet access at the time, at around PHP40/hr (or PHP92/hr in 2024 money) at computer shops, was still too high for most Filipinos.

Philippine ISPs Interconnect: PhIX and Other Internet Exchange Points (1995-1997)

One problem with the ISP setup in the mid-1990s was that each ISP had its own IPL (International Private Link) connection direct to the US, since the large majority of popular websites at the time (Yahoo.com, CNN.com, Britannica.com, Ebay.com, LonelyPlanet.com, etc) were in the US. The advantage of this setup was that browsing of US websites was faster. The disadvantage was that browsing local websites was very slow because, unless both browser and webserver were connected to the same ISP, the TCP/IP packets had to go to the US and back. If it so happened that the submarine-cable-based international leased line went down, then even browsing websites on different ISPs was not possible.  The setup is shown below.

The obvious solution was for each ISP to interconnect with each other.  However, the ISPs did not initially do so because they were actually competitors and each ISP wanted to grow its subscriber base of customers and websites to be as large as possible. This lack of local interconnection eventually forced some ISPs and IPPs to relocate their webservers to the US just to ensure good response time during browsing. (from “The State of the Net in the Philippines”).

The idea of interconnecting ISPs, also known as “Domestic Peering”, originated in the US, where it became necessary to interconnect ISPs to conserve backhaul bandwidth due to the exponential growth of the Internet, especially when it was opened to commercial traffic (from Romeo Agan Salac, “A Study on the Internet Connectivity in the Philippines, Aug 2016, https://koreascience.kr/article/JAKO201627037745764.pdf ). In this setup, the ISP’s primary gateways to the Internet are gathered at one point, called the Internet eXchange Point or IXP, after which, each gateway router is configured to include the routes of fellow ISPs, thereby preventing local traffic from getting routed to the international gateway router (from “PhIX FAQs”, Aug 1997, ttps://web.archive.org/web/20060505210259/http://www.phix.net.ph/faq.html ).

In August 1995, PLDT started exploratory discussions on the setting up of an IXP initially called the “Metro Manila Media Access Point”. In April 1996, PLDT, through its New Ventures Development Division, commenced development on the project, which in May 1996 was dubbed the Philippine Internet eXchange or PhIX. In October 1996, the project was formally presented to 15 local ISPs, of which the five largest expressed interest. These ISPs – MosCom, Infocom, IPhil Communications, WorldTel-Philippines, and Virtualink – signed a Multi-Lateral Peering Agreement or MLPA, where they agreed to allow fellow PhIX members’ traffic to pass through their own gateway routers without filtering or inspection, and without any monetary settlement required. (from “PhIX FAQS”). In April 1997, the National Telecomunications Commission or NTC granted PLDT a Provisional Authority or to install, operate, and maintain the IXP. (from R. Gerard Plaza, ”ISPs to Form Local Internet Exchange”, Philippine IT Update, Jun 30 1997).

From January to June 1997, pilot testing was held, and on July 3, 1997, the IXP was formally launched, after which participating ISPs enjoyed faster surfing of local websites (from “PhIX FAQs”). Another benefit was faster e-mail sending, considering that the majority of e-mail are sent to local recipients, which imply local mail servers.   The setup is shown below.

Although beneficial to local websites and mail servers, the launch of PhIX was not without issues. Six of PLDT’s telco competitors – Globe Telecom, RCPI, Islacom, ETPI, PT&T, and Capitol Wireless – protested against the appointment of PLDT as an IXP operator since the PhIX service “unfairly compete[s] with services they are presently offering.” (from “ISPs to Form Local Internet Exchange”)  This was true because PhIX allowed PLDT to become an ISP bandwidth wholesaler; i.e., PLDT was able to attract more large ISPs and sell them bandwidth by bulk which the former “retailed” to smaller ISPs (from “Challenges Facing ISPs in the Philippines”), all to the detriment of the other telcos.  In the end, the other telcos were forced to build their own IXPs; e.g., Globe Telecom with the Globe Internet eXchange or GIX, BayanTel with the BayanTel Internet & Gaming Exchange (from “A Study on the Internet Connectivity in the Philippines”), and ETPI with the Manila Internet eXchange or MIX.

Even non-telcos also built IXPs, like DOST-ASTI with Philippine Open Internet eXchange or PHOPENIX, and even PHNet with the Common Routing Exchange or CORE. Incidentally, CORE was free but had a lower level of  service. These IXPs were themselves also peered although some interconnection links, like between PhIX and MIX, were often congested. (from Erwin Alampay, “ICT Sector Performance Review for Philippines”, Sep 2011, https://ncpag.upd.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ICT-Sector-Performance-Review-2011.pdf ).

Philippine ISPs Unite: The Philippine Internet Service Organization or PISO (1996 to early-2000s)

Despite the profitability of ISP service at the time, Philippine ISPs still had legitimate concerns (note again that this was in the mid- to late-1990s; some of these problems have already been resolved as of today in 2024):

• Expensive Backend Hardware. Since all computer and network hardware were (and still is) imported, backend infrastructure cost remained high. For instance, powerful and reliable servers like the HP-Compaq Proliant 8000 (released in August 1999), which was an “8-way” server (i.e., one with eight Intel Pentium III Xeon 700MHz CPUs and up to 16GB of RAM), cost PHP35 million (or around PHP80.15 million in 2024 money) each. Also, reliable routers like those from Cisco cost around PHP800,000 (or around PHP1,83 million in 2024 money) each and had only 2.5 years of depreciable life. (from “Challenges Facing Philippine ISPs”)
• Inadequate Telephone Infrastructure.  Both Internet subscribers and ISPs were dependent on the telephone infrastructure, since both needed to connect to the telephone network for dial-up service. As put by Jim Ayson, “The biggest obstacle to the growth of the Internet in the Philippines is the poor telephone infrastructure. You can’t get to the ‘Net if you don’t have a dial tone in the first place.” (from Jim Ayson, “The State of the Net in the Philippines”, Sep 23 1996). This problem was partly addressed by Executive Order 109 in March 1995 (discussed above).
• Expensive Backhaul Bandwidth.  Backhaul refers to the data connection from a network’s edge to the network’s core. With respect to local Internet infrastructure, this referred to the leased lines from an ISP’s PoP to the other routers in the network.  Small ISPs needed leased lines to connect to the large ISPs (the Tier 1 ISPs). Large ISPs needed leased lines to connect to the telco network centers where IPLs (international leased lines extending from the network center to the submarine cable landing site then via undersea cable to the US) were terminated.  Back in 2000, a local leased line with 64Kbps (0.064Mbps) bandwidth cost around PHP50,000/mo (around PHP115,000/mo in 2024 money).  The cost of local leased lines was higher than those of neighboring countries; one possible reason was the small number of players (PLDT, BayanTel, Eastern Telecoms, Philcom) in that market.  An international leased line, on the other hand, like an E1 channel with 2.048Mbps bandwidth from the Philippines to the US mainland cost $40,000/mo (around $72,800/mo or PHP4.25M/mo in 2024 money). Again, the high cost was due to the small number of players (PLDT, BayanTel, Eastern Telecoms, Philcomsat, and Loral Satellite) in this market.  Backhaul was so expensive that telecommunications services were as high as 70% of an ISP’s monthly expenses. (from “Challenges Facing Philippine ISPs”)
• Telco Competition.  The major difference between telcos and ISPs at the time was that the telcos were well-versed in “circuit-switched” technology, since telephony was implemented using telephone exchanges which switched telephone circuits. ISPs, on the other hand, were well-versed in “packet-switched” technology, since the Internet  was implemented using servers and routers which routed data packets. However, over the years, telcos learned and applied packet-switched technology in their systems as well, allowing them to deploy their own PoPs and compete directly with the ISPs. Via vertical integration (the telcos did not have to procure leased lines from third parties since they owned the leased lines themselves), telcos were able to lower their costs and price their Internet services competitively.

Due to the above concerns, on April 30, 1996, Philippine ISPs formed an industry association called the Philippine Internet Service Organization or PISO. The stated goals of PISO were: (1) “to promote widespread and full use of the Internet in the Philippines”; (2) “to help ensure that the benefits of Internet access will be available to the broadest sectors of Philippine society”; (3) to officially represent the country’s ISPs before other members of the Philippine IT and the global IT community; and (4) to promote the interests of ISPs (from “PISO Charter”, Jan 1998, https://web.archive.org/web/19980112144737/http://www.piso.org.ph/charter.html ). The last goal included representing Philippine ISPs in public forums and in the halls of Congress.  Note again that PISO was for association, unlike PhIX which was for interconnection (from “Challenges Facing ISPs in the Philippines”).

PISO versus the Telcos: Telephone Metering (late-1990s)

One issue that arose during the rise of Internet use in the country was the increase in the average number of minutes that a telephone line was in use.  This was because, during a dial-up Internet session, the telephone line was tied up for around half-an-hour to an hour at a time.  Note that the telco’s circuit-switched telephone system was never designed for this type of use. The telephone system was designed instead for voice calls with a call duration or so-called Holding Time of only around 3 minutes.

A telephone exchange or switch contains circuits, one for each call that a switch can handle simultanously.  For instance, a typical Switching Office, which caters to a municipality or city, may have 20,000 subscribers, with all of their household and office telephone wires terminating at the Switching Office. The Switching Office has a Switch that can use a free circuit from its pool of circuits to connect a telephone call between any two of those 20,000 subscribers. Assuming that the Switch is capable of connecting 1,000 telephone calls at any one time, it means that the Switch contains a pool of 1,000 circuits and can maintain 1,000 simultaneous telephone conversations. The 1,001th caller would then experience so-called Call Blocking because the Switch has run out of circuits. This is the situation when one hears the infamous recorded message, “All lines are busy at the moment. Please try your call later.”  A switch, well-provisioned with a good number of circuits, would have a low probability of Call Blocking. This results in a so-called high “Quality of Service” or QoS, which the ITU-T defines as: “The collective effect of service performance, which determine the degree of satisfaction

of a user of the service." (from Villy Iversen, "Teletraffic Engineer & Network Planning", May 2009, http://oldwww.com.dtu.dk/education/34340/material/telenook2009pdf.pdf )”  Again, the greater the number of telephone circuits in a switch, the lower the probability of Call Blocking, and the higher the QoS.  Unfortunately, dial-up Internet’s high Holding Time raised the probability of Call Blocking and lowered the QoS.  One solution was to increase the Switch’s number of circuits but this was an expensive proposition.  It was not unusual in the mid-1990s for a telephone switch to cost around USD500,000 (around USD1.03M or PHP60M in 2024 money) per Switching Office. Upgrading these systems were very costly to the telco.  An example of a telephone switch is shown below.

The solution proposed by PLDT, Globe, BayanTel, and other Philippine telcos was to implement Telephone Metering, where the customer’s telephone use  would be billed per-minute beyond a certain threshold. For instance, instead of the flat rate of around PHP900 per month, PLDT would have set a threshold of 1 hour per day, or 31 hours or 1,860 minutes of telephone calls per month for PHP900, beyond which the customer would pay PHP0.50/min of call.  This would have allowed the telcos to offset the cost of reengineering their telephone networks to reduce congestion following the rise in Internet use.

This was vehemently opposed by PISO, mainly because ISPs at the time also charged by the minute, at around PHP0.75/min (around PHP2.10/min in 2024 money) and discouraging telephone line use would impact their incomes negatively. PISO, which was “the most active oppositor of the metering plan”, claimed that telephone metering “would inhibit the nascent Internet sector and its bright promise as a very affordable tool for the Philippines to pole-vault into the 21st century”, since the Internet is “acknowledged as the vital tool and artery for trade, education, and communication in the 21st century”, and “[i]n the information societies of the next millennium, it shall serve as the link for the world's peoples to participate in the life of the global village.” (from “PISO Position Paper on the Metering of Telephone Usage”, Jan 1998, https://web.archive.org/web/19980112145557/http://www.piso.org.ph/meter.html )

In its own position paper, which PLDT submitted to Sen. Vicente Sotto III, who chaired the Senate Committee on Public Services, PLDT argued that “demand for Internet access depends on owning or having access to a computer, and having the basic education to use the Internet. In the Philippines, it is likely that demand will come from the higher-income, better-educated customers who are able to afford the proposed per minute rates." PLDT also argued that the current flat rate was unfair to the telco because it was effectively subsidizing ISPs “whose basic products are based on the PLDT network” (from “PLDT, Globe Say, Net Users Can Afford Metered Calls”, ComputerWorld-Philippines Vol 8 No 15, Feb 28 1999)  The position paper ignored the fact that a large number of Filipinos accessed the Internet via computer shops, and that telephone metering would increase the Internet-access hourly rate at those shops.

Needless to say, PLDT failed to convince the Senate that its metering plan, which the telco euphemistically named Local Measured Service or LMS, was justified, and in February 1999, the Department of Transportation & Communications or DOTC (today’s Department of Information & Communications Technology or DICT in 2024) announced its disapproval of the scheme. The National Telecommunications Commission or NTC followed suit and suspended the Provisional Authority that would have allowed PLDT to start its metering plan in May 1999.  PISO’s legal counsel Adrian Sison stated that the "suspension of the metering scheme of PLDT and those of other telcos is a victory for the whole country, not only of PISO." (from “Metering Down But Not Out”, ComputerWorld-Philippines Vol. 8, No. 15, Feb 28 1999)

Had telephone metering been implemented by the telcos, there is no doubt that Internet access at the turn of the century would have been even more expensive in the country. For lobbying against it, we are grateful to PISO and the other oppositors.  Today (in 2024), PISO and ISPs in general are but memories of the eventful times in the late-1990s to early-2000s when Internet access was growing in the country. In the end, due to reasons of efficiency (e.g., the integration of the ISP into the telco and

the replacement of narrowband (dial-up) with broadband technologies), as will be explained later, the

telcos won and the ISPs faded away.

B. ISP Services

Metered Postpaid ISP Services

Unlike today (in 2024), where we have a flat rate for home-based Internet access, back in the mid-to-late 1990s, Internet access was metered by ISPs on a per-minute or per-hour basis. Shown below are ads of typical ISPs in 1998.

NetSurfers Club, also known as NSClub was a medium-sized ISP located at Parian Center at Commonwealth Ave in Quezon City. Its president, Emer Rojas, used to work at PLDT before joining the ISP bandwagon. The company started as an Internet surfing club, where members enjoyed Value-Added Services like reward promos, global roaming e-mail (where one can read e-mail via any ISP, a novelty at the time), and free classified ads listing. The company eventually commercialized its services and applied as an ISP with the NTC. NSClub was a member of both PhiX and PESO. (see “Challenges Facing ISPs in the Philippines”)

From their ad above, NSClub ca May 1998 charged as low as PHP14/hr for a monthly fee of PHP2,100/mo (around PHP39/hr for a monthly fee of  PHP5,580/mo in 2024 money), to as high as PHP45/hr for a monthly fee of PHP90/mo (around PHP126/hr for a monthly fee of PHP252/mo in 2024 money). On average, it charged PHP23/hr for a monthly fee of PHP700/mo (around PHP65/hr for a monthly fee of PHP1,960/mo in 2024 money). This was at par with the PHP50/hr (around PHP140/hr in 2024 money) rate that was charged by computer shops in 1998, considering that NSClub also provided global roaming-capable e-mail accounts.

PempeNet, on the other hand, was a small ISP and, from its ca May 1998 ad above, provided dial-up Internet access at only PHP9.50/hr (around PHP26.60/hr in 2024 money) but this was likely at a high monthly fee (which they did not state in the ad). Its monthly fee was as low as PHP50/mo (around PHP140/mo in 2024 money) but this was likely at a high per-hour rate (which they also did not state in their ad). The ad also says that the ISP had a monthly plan called “Plan 0”, which means that the customer paid only for Internet access minutes incurred, even if down to zero minute per month; however, this implies that the per-hour rate is even higher than that for “Plan 50” (which again was not stated in the ad). Ads like this of PempeNet were typical in the cut-throat ISP industry at the time.

There was also the trade-off between price and bandwidth; i.e., the lower the per-hour rate the more likely that the bandwidth was also low.  According to Emer Rojas of NSClub in an interview in May 2000, the quality of service of a dial-up ISP depended mainly on two things. First, QoS was dictated by the availability of the ISP’s telephone lines. One rule of thumb was that a Telephone to Subscriber Ratio of 1:5, like that of the large Pacific Internet ISP, usually resulted in good service; 1:10 usually resulted in a busy signal for 10 minutes; 1:15, in a busy signal for 15 minutes; and 1:20, in a busy signal for 1 hour (the standard dialer in MS Windows 98 can be configured to retry the dial-up a given number of times on Busy signal). The ISP must therefore strike a balance between providing good service and keeping within its telco expenses budget. Second, QoS was dictated by the backhaul bandwidth, or the bandwidth of the ISP’s leased lines to PhIX, to a larger ISP, and/or to an IPL telco. The larger the bandwidth the better the service. In the case of NSClub, the bandwidth per customer on lean days was around 15Kbps (0.015Mbps) but it dipped on busy days to 500bps (0.5Kbps or 0.0005Mbps), especially during the peak surfing time of 10PM to 1AM. (from “Challenges Facing ISPs in the Philippines”)

Internet access in the late-1990s was a postpaid service, with the subscriber billed every month. Below, we have the Statement of Account for July 1998 of a subscriber of a medium-sized ISP called NetAsia.  Since BayadCenter was still in its infancy back then, bill payment for this service was possible only at Metrobank (and later also BPI) branches, and at the ISP’s office at Salcedo Village in Makati. Hence, there was the practice of some subscribers to pay in advance (note the negative ‘Previous Balance’ value in the SOA below) to lessen the number of payment errands.

The Beginning of Prepaid Internet in the Philippines

Prepaid services in the Philippines did not begin with prepaid Internet, instead it began with prepaid mobile services. Extelcom launched its Extelcom Cellcard service in May 1997 (from “Cellcard Launch, Diamond Hotel Manila”, Feb 19 1998, https://www.oocities.org/sunsetstrip/9739/projects.html ), while Piltel launched its Piltel Mobiline Phone Pal service in Oct 1997 (from “Piltel to Launch Phone Pal Prepaid Card", Oct 08 1997, https://www.telecompaper.com/news/piltel-to-launch-phone-pal-pre-paid-card--119355 ).  From here, all other mobile operators at the time followed suit: Islacom with Instant Islacom Prepaid GSM service in November 1997 (from “Isla Communications Selects Brightpoint to Manage Philippines Prepaid System”, Nov 19 1997, https://www.siliconinvestor.com/readreplies.aspx?msgid=2747065 ), Globe with Globe Prepaid Plus ca 1997 (from “Globe Telecom and Subsidiaries”, 2003, http://www.geocities.ws/rccbarredo/globeisla.htm ), and Smart with Smart Billcrusher in 1998.  These telcos sold scratchcards which bore 10- to 12-digit PINs, which when entered on the mobile phone, credited the prepaid airtime account with the scratchcard value.  Prepaid service was more expensive at a per-minute basis than postpaid service. For instance, Islacom charged around PHP8/min (around PHP22/min in 2024 money) for postpaid mobile service but charged PHP11/min (around PHP30.8/min in 2024 money) for prepaid.

Prepaid phone cards were very popular among Filipinos, mainly because it did away with registration at a telco business center, and allowed a subscriber to budget his or her mobile phone usage. However, it was only two years later in 2000 that prepaid Internet cards first appeared in the country (from “First Came Prepaid Phone Cards, Now Comes Prepaid Internet Service”, May 15 2000, Philippine Daily Inquirer). The reason is that there is a difference between prepaid mobile service and prepaid Internet service. With prepaid mobile service, the subscriber first buys a prepaid SIM card, which establishes the buyer as a subscriber of that SIM card’s telco, then tops off the account with a scratchcard. The prepaid mobile scratchcard, therefore, needs to bear only the PIN by which the prepaid system can validate the top-up. In the case of prepaid Internet service, there is often no existing Internet subscription to top up. Thus, the scratchcard has to bear both the Username and Password.  Since the scratchcard is only one-time-use, its Username & Password pair also had to be one-time-use. This is the reason why prepaid Internet scratchcards have usernames that look like just a jumble of random characters. The prepaid Internet scratchcard thus bears a One-Time-Use Username & Password pair.

One of the first (if not the first) prepaid Internet services in the country was QuickWeb, which operated as early as 1999 (see “QuickWeb”, Oct 08 1999, https://web.archive.org/web/19991008014140/http://www.quickweb.com.ph/ ). QuickWeb sold prepaid Internet kits to allow users to become subscribers without having to first pass by and register at an ISP office as with postpaid ISP service. The kits were sold mainly at National Book Store and Office 1 Superstore branches. Shown below is one such kit.

The QuickWeb Prepaid Internet Kit’s main feature is the so-called Access Card which has a One-Time-Use Username & Password (‘qw2-064708’ & ‘2f85549k’ in the figure) pair, along with other information (Access Numbers, Mail Server URL, Tech Support Telephone Number, etc). To use the kit, the user set up the MS Windows 98 dialer with one of the given Access Numbers, entered the Username & Password, then dialed up and connected.  The ISP’s Network Access Server or NAS verified the given credentials against the ones stored in the Authentication, Authorization, & Accounting or AAA Server, monitored the usage, then cut the connection once the prepaid credit is depleted.

Prepaid Internet Goes Mainstream

Soon after prepaid Internet service was introduced, other ISPs brought out streamlined versions of the prepaid Internet kit. One feature that could be omitted from the kit was the Internet Utilities CD-ROM. For instance the QuickWeb kit’s CD-ROM contained the following software: (1) Browser (MS Internet Explorer 5); (2) e-Mail Client (Qualcomm Eudora 4.3); (3) Chat Client (Mirc 5.6.1, Gooey 2.0, ICQ 99b); (4) Music Player (WinAmp 2.5); (5) Image Editor (PolyV 3.3); (6) File Transfer Program (SiteDesigner 3-D FTP 2.0, CoffeeCup FTP 1.0); (7) Antivirus Program (McAfee VirusScan v4.0.3); and (8) Utilities (WinZip 7.0).  Since these programs are mostly freeware, the Internet Utilities CD-ROM can be omitted. Next, since there is no more CD-ROM, the large CD-ROM-sized packaging can also be made smaller.  In the end, there was only the Access Card, which was made to resemble a typical prepaid mobile phone scratchcard, and for the User Guide, a small instruction sheet enclosed with the scratchcard.

The first to introduce this streamlined version of the prepaid Internet kit was Converge founder Dennis Anthony Uy’s company ComClark, which was an IT company operating from Clark Freeport in Pampanga (from “Info-Tech Provider Gets ISO Certification”, Mar 22 2011, http://www.yatsrestaurant.com/info-tech-provider-gets-iso-certification/ ). In 2000, ComClark introduced the ComClark Instanet Prepaid Internet Card, shown below.

From 2000 until the late 2000s, prepaid Internet scratchcards became very popular in the country. Shown below are some of these.

Telcos as ISPs: The Beginning of the End

Note from the above figure that, in the mid-2000s, PLDT also provided a prepaid dial-up Internet service called PLDT Vibe. This was a sign of things to come. In the mid-to-late 1990s, telcos were separate from ISPs.  In the light of RA 7925, an ISP was a Value-Added Service or VAS company, and that a telco may offer VAS services only if it competes fairly with existing VAS companies (see “RA 7925”, Mar 01 1995, https://lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1995/ra_7925_1995.html ). In 2002, PLDT decided to enter the ISP business, investing PHP100M on the venture, which was PLDT Vibe. PLDT Vibe was intended to benefit from PLDT’s 1.5 million residential postpaid landline subscribers who were pre-activated on the dial-up platform.

(from “PLDT to Invest P100M on Fast-Growing Internet Business”, May 30 2002, https://www.philstar.com/business/2002/05/30/162769/pldt-invest-p100-m-fast-growing-internet-business )

From PLDT’s point of view, there were obvious advantages to becoming an ISP. Shown below is a comparison of the so-called “logical architecture” of an ISP (where “logical” means high-level view of the system in terms of data exchange among system components), and the actual “physical architecture” of an ISP (where “physical” refers to the actual implementation of the system in terms of the physical network connections among its components).

From the figure above, MosCom’s PoP (Point of Presence) is located in, say, a municipality served by PLDT. The PoP has two links to PLDT, the first is the Trunk Line (shown in red), which is a single cable carrying multiple telephone lines from the telco to the ISP PoP, and the second is the Leased Line (shown in blue), which is a single cable carrying a data line from the ISP PoP to the telco.

In the Logical Architecture, we see the Trunk Line connected to the telco’s Telephone Network, and the Leased Line connected to the telco’s Leased Line Network. The Logical Architecture makes it appear as if the Telephone Network and the Leased Line Network are two separate places.

In the Physical Architecture, or actual implementation, we see that the Trunk Line extends from the telco’s Switching Office’s Switch, then to the Main Distribution Frame or MDF (where all subscriber lines – whether home telephone line, office telephone line, or office leased lines – are terminated), all the way via utility poles to the ISP PoP building. However, unlike in the Logical Architecture, the Leased Line extends from the ISP PoP back to the same place, namely the Switching Office, simply because the Switching Office is the telco’s single point of presence in the whole area. The Leased Line’s physical cable may even terminate at the same MDF (there could be several) where the Trunk Line emerged.

Also note that the Switching Office is interconnected with other switching offices via high-bandwidth links (which could be microwave-, copper-, or fiber-based), because the Switching Office was originally designed to forward voicecall signals to other switching offices to complete a circuit for a call; e.g., when a home telephone subscriber in Cainta calls up an office telephone subscriber in Makati, the voice signal is passed by the switches through the Cainta, Pasig, Taguig, and Makati switching offices.  These so-called backhaul links have existed even before the arrival of the Internet. However, they are usable for both voice and Internet data because these links are digital and don’t care whether the bits they carry are from telephones or from computers.

From the MDF, the physical Leased Line is connected to a so-called Multiplexer which combines the Leased Line data with those of other lines, whether voice or data. From here, the data is transmitted via the backhaul links among switching offices until it reaches the telco’s Network Center, which is finally connected by international leased-lines to the Internet’s routers abroad.

From the figure, it can be seen that it makes sense to integrate the ISP PoP into the Switching Office, and this is shown below.

As can be seen in the figure, putting the ISP PoP right inside the telco Switching Office introduced the following changes: (1) the kilometers-long Trunk Line is gone, replaced by just, say, a 50-meter cable connecting the MDF to the ISP PoP’s PABX; (2) the kilometers-long Leased Line is gone, also replaced by another, say, 50-meter cable from the ISP PoP’s Edge Router to the MDF.  These changes provided the following benefits: (1) there is no more Trunk Line capacity problem; the ISP is free to add more telephone lines to the Trunk Line simply by adding more 50-meter cables if necessary; (2) there is no more Leased Line capacity problem; the bandwidth can be as large as can be borne by the 50-meter cable, which is multiples of megabits-per-second more because the connection has been essentially converted from a WAN (Wide Area Network) connection into a LAN (Local Area Network) one; and lastly (3) there are no more physical cable reliability problems that would arise from, say, inclement weather, or someone pruning a tree and accidentally hitting the cables on a utility pole.

Thus, from a network design point of view, integrating the telco and the ISP makes for good engineering. Integration also spares the ISP from telco-related expenses, which, as mentioned before, can account for as high as 70% of an ISP’s expenses. Thus, from a commercial point of view, integration also makes for good business. PLDT was not the only telco which realized this; Globe Telecom, too, created their own dial-up ISP called Globe G-Net, which served mainly the business market. (from “The PHNet CORE”, 2000, https://www.ph.net/CORE/CORE-mem.html ) Subsequent generations of Internet access technology learned from the above and assume that the ISP is a telco.  

Going back to RA 7925’s stipulation that telcos can offer ISP (VAS) services only if they will compete fairly with the existing ISP companies, a telco versus ISP fight is actually a lopsided contest. The NTC still approved this, however, because the telcos did price their services at par with those of the ISPs. The big difference is that an Internet service business is much more profitable and sustainable to a telco than to a traditional ISP due to reduced costs.

The End of an Era

In 2009, revered Philippine Internet icon and MosCom co-founder Dr. Bill Torres said that “the telcos are the Goliaths and the ISPs are the Davids of the industry, and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to battle the giants except to offer something to consumers that the telcos do not provide.” (from “ISPs a Vanishing Breed”, Feb 28 2009, https://www.zdnet.com/article/isps-a-vanishing-breed/ ). MosCom  eventually became a shadow of its former self and in 2015 was acquired by Binondo-based Tri-Isys Internet Corp., the company behind the ISPx Bonanza prepaid Internet cards. Since then, Tri-Isys and the other ISPs have also largely faded from view.

Some people wax nostalgic whenever they hear the funky sounds of a dial-up modem. For them, the sound is associated with a simpler and happier time when society was hopeful that the Internet, which was finally within their reach, will indeed be “the vital tool and artery for trade, education, and communication in the 21st century” and the means “ to participate in the life of the global village” (https://web.archive.org/web/19980112145557/http://www.piso.org.ph/meter.html ). For them, an ISP was this company that provided access to this wondrous Internet in hours measured by small scratchcards.

The ISPs have had their days in the sun. Those days are gone and that’s just fine.