DICT claims VSAT Project above board, former USec Rio claims otherwise

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) on Tuesday maintained that its Very Small Aperture Technology (VSAT) Project is above board, but a former official claims otherwise.

According to DICT Secretary Gregorio Honasan II, the current VSAT of the department has 20 times faster internet speeds at five times lower costs than the previous contractor—United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

"We have given UNDP and its foreign contractor numerous opportunities to comply with their obligations but unfortunately the Filipino people can no longer wait idly by," he said in an emailed statement.

"Connectivity is needed immediately. Especially in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDAs) in our country," said Honasan.

Under the Free Wi-Fi for All Program, the DICT aims to provide free and fast internet speeds through deploying VSATs in GIDAs.

At present, Honasan said the DICT-deployed VSAT technology has a combined download plus upload committed information rate (CIR) of 6.3 megabits per second (Mbps) with three access points per site, and a maximum information rate of 25 Mbps.

Meanwhile, the UNDP VSAT was said to have a committed information rate of 0.3 Mbps with one access point, and a maximum information rate of 2 Mbps.

In terms of prices, the DICT said the current program is at P30,000 per access point in absolute amounts and P14,285.71 per month on a per Mbps basis.

In contrast, the department said the UNDP's price per access point is around P19,148 and P63,826.67 per month on a per Mbps basis.

Citing such figures, the DICT said that if the UNDP VSAT were to theoretically reach the contracted 6.3 Mbps committed information rate per year, it would cost P4.825 million versus the current P1.080 million.

"Thus, the price of DICT VSATs is around five times cheaper than a UNDP VSAT," the DICT said in the statement.

For his part, former DICT undersecretary Eliseo Rio, Jr. questioned the prices indicated by the department in a post he made available in his Facebook account.

With three access points each at P30,000, this would indicate that each VSAT would cost P90,000 per month.

Based on such prices, Rio said that We Are IT (WIT) was awarded P115.650 million for five months of 257 sites, while PhilComSat was awarded P112.500 million for 250 sites for five months.

The former undersecretary noted, however, that WIT in its website was offering only P8,500 per month per VSAT under its BIGSKY35 promo with a maximum information rate of 35 Mbps.

At such a rate, Rio said this would only amount to P25,500 per month for each VSAT, significantly less than the P90,000 awarded to WIT, but still higher than the UNDP VSAT at P19,200 per month.

"It would seem that in the negotiations it was a higher cost per month that prevailed, instead of what is the lowest cost in the market," Rio said.

"Whoever did this negotiation clearly did not have the interest of the government in mind, specially when government is in the midst of a pandemic crises," he added.

In his post, Rio defended the UNDP VSAT which was rejected by the DICT, explaining that the previous project was designed by VSAT experts.

The UNDP VSATs used a dynamic bandwidth management platform, where sites requiring more bandwidth are allocated from sites that require less bandwidth.

"Because of this, the government is assured of cost-effectiveness and it will never be shortchanged nor be overpriced by a United Nation agency that has helped our country for many years on numerous development projects without any stain of anomaly," said Rio.

"Yet this is the project that DICT rejected and replaced by the questionable MIS VSAT project," he added.—AOL, GMA News