Pinay IT exec gets seat in global Internet body

A Filipina IT executive has recently been appointed to the board of the powerful Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global body governing the Internet. Judith Duavit Vazquez, who also sits on the board of GMA Network Inc., the parent company of GMA News Online, reportedly beat out 86 other candidates from around the world for the seat, which was announced in August. Vazquez is the first Asian female to be given a seat at the august body as well as the first Filipino to be conferred the position. According to Adam Peake, chair of the ICANN Nominating Committee 2011, Vazquez was chosen not only because she met the stringent criteria of the global body, but also because of her unique skills which could contribute to achieving the mission of the organization. "Judith brings exceptional business experience and skills, is someone who understands the IT sector and had contributed to related work through the [Asia Pacific Network Information Center]," Peake said in a statement. Vazquez brings to the global body decades' worth of experience in the IT industry, headlined by the establishment in 1995 of the 45-floor The Peak building in Makati—considered the country's first ICT-ready building—as well as the founding of PHCOLO, Inc., a neutral telecommunications provider. An Asian voice Speaking before the press in a briefing on Friday, Vazquez said she intends to fulfill the ICANN's vision of "one world, one Internet, everyone on it" by being the "Asian voice" in the governing body. She said this can be achieved through the concerted global push toward IPv6, the next-generation Internet protocol, as well as the opening up of local telecom infrastructure firms to foreign investors. "What we need is for the Philippine government to review its telecom and media ownership laws," Vazquez said. "They should review the regulations which currently act as a disincentive for foreign ownership to invest in our communications infrastructure." Under the 1987 Constitution, foreign ownership of public utility firms is currently limited to 40 percent, while media entities should be exclusively owned by Filipinos. Vazquez urged the government to adopt a sort-of "open skies" policy for telecom firms, which would spur growth in the sector and thereby improve access by Filipinos to the Internet. "We should consider an open skies policy allowing foreign telcos to bring traffic in and out of the country," she stressed. Currently, Vazquez shared, there are a total of eight submarine cables terminating in the country, a "very rare" occurrence. "But foreign telcos are not allowed in the central business district. After which, it is the local telecom company that delivers what is called terrestrial fibering into Philippine land," she said. If these barriers to investment are brought down, Vazquez said this will only make bandwidth rates more affordable. "If our bandwith rates are competitive, you will see the rise of innovation—in websites and call centers. If we are number one today, we will [remain in the top] if we are open to the global field," she added. Cheaper broadband rates The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., being one of the oldest telecom firms in the country, controls seven out of these eight submarine cables, literally controlling the traffic coming from these landings, according to Vazquez. "In effect, they are literally blocking out [more than] 47 foreign telcos, which accounts for the high voice termination costs and high bandwidth rates in the country," she pointed out. One way out of the cost conundrum is by enabling domestic peering, according to Vazquez. Traditionally, Internet traffic, regardless of where they originate, are routed through international peering points such as the ones in Singapore. This means that when a user is a subscriber of a particular telco but would want to connect with a subscriber of another telco, the traffic would have to go out of the country before reaching its destination, regardless of the fact that both origin and destination are in the same country. With domestic peering, a common peering point is established locally so that traffic wouldn't have to go outside the country anymore. This means lower latency as well as lower costs for the telco, since less jump points are used. The National Telecommunications Commission has initiated a proposal to establish such a domestic peering point, which will be hosted in the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-ASTI). Vazquez noted, however, that not all telcos agree to the NTC's proposal, given obvious business reasons. "If I am a big telecom ISP like the PLDT with as much as 60 percent market share, will I allow a small Internet provider in the province to piggyback on my market? There is a financial consideration at stake," she pointed out. Peering prospects APNIC, the Asia Pacific Internet body which Vazquez is also a member of, has been promoting peering since the early inception of the Internet, she pointed out. The proposal, however, has not prospered here because of what she calls an "infrastructure mistake": when the Philippine Open Internet Exchanged was hosted at Globe's MK2 data center in Makati. "When you have a peering point, it must be in a neutral site. The more than 450 peering points in the world are located either in government or in the largest scientific learning base of the country, which is the university," she stressed. "But at this point in time, we don't have a neutral colocation site in the country except one: PHCOLO, which I founded, and puts me in a conflict of interest," she added. What the government could do, through the DOST-ASTI, is colocate one server rack in their facility to act as the domesitc peering point, she suggested. This, however, has been floated by the NTC before. Globe Telecom supported the move, saying it could improve Internet connectivity in the country, but their chief rival PLDT had some qualms about it. Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel), on the other hand, just had a few qualms. "We agree with domestic peering but we are unsure of the capabilities of the DOST-ASTI facility to protect the peering point," lawyer William Pamintuan, SVP for legal services of Digitel, told reporters. Pamintuan said they would want assurance from the DOST that they would put up high-level security measures around the facility to ensure that external attacks wouldn't compromise all of the telcos connected to it. Regardless of what the government may end up doing regarding domestic peering, Vazquez said it understands if the government couldn't devote much effort to supporting ICT development in the country given "other material infrastructure priorities today." "The challenged, then, is posed to the youth. We have brought you the Internet, how are you going to use it for national progress? Not just for entertainment, but also for knowledge and betterment," she said. — TJD/OMG, GMA News