Since November of 2014, the National Telecommunications Commission has been holding pubic hearings about the issue on Minimum Broadband Speeds. Recent updates about the results of the series of hearings have yielded promising results.
In a summary update by @ceso, there are a number of regulations and adjustments in the manner by which ISPs will market and service their subscribers.
Here are the more plausible outcome of the hearings:
- Possible removal of the “Up to X Mbps” in the subscription plan. It will be replaced by an indicated average data rate per area.
- Service downtimes will not be billed. Computation for rebates will be automatic and does not need to be reported by subscribers.
- Data caps or Fair Use Policy will be limited to just 80% of maximum possible limit. Example: For a 1Mbps, the maximum limit is 128KB/s x 60 secs/minute x 60 mins/hour x 24 hours x 30 days = 331GB. Data cap shall be no less than 80% of 331GB or 265GB.
- NTC will regularly conduct independent tests of internet speeds on several areas to check for consistency and reliability then report it to the public/subscribers.
Perhaps the biggest and most critical of all these will be the data caps. ISPs have started phasing out their unlimited services and replacing them with volume-based subscription.
Customers who still have their old subscription plans that indicated unlimited data will be the ones who will benefit the most (so remember to not change that plan to anything new they will offer or else the “unlimited” service will also be removed or replaced with a data volume).
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