Philippine Economic Society (PES)
Businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan said more investments in the country’s telecommunications infrastructure to cope with the so-called “New Normal,” as companies roll out strategies that will shield their employees from coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
Pangilinan, managing director and CEO of Hong Kong-based First Pacific Co. Ltd., said there would be change of attitude and behavior among the working class, driven mostly by fear of the quarantine implemented by the government as a means to control the spread of Covid-19.
He said when the quarantine is eventually lifted some of the people will continue to work from home, a portion will remain as frontliners and the rest will go back to the offices, which would have to be retrofitted to effect physical distancing among the employees.
“Given that trend, the impact on the telco infrastructure is going to be quite serious. Clearly there would be more broadband usage from the home, even enterprise will be affected, a number of institutions will be relying on enterprise broadband,” said Pangilinan during an online forum conducted by the Philippine Economic Society on Monday.
“We suspect that the pressure on the capital expenditure budget on the telcos will be raised, this year and may be next year as well and so forth as we expand both the wireless and the home broadband situation,” he added.
First Pacific has investments in Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and PLDT Inc., where Pangilinan sits as chairman.
He also said the government should enforce the National ID system, so that it will have an an efficient way of delivering financial aid to the poor, without the money going through the local government units.
“If the government is afraid of creating… the National ID system, then you should ask the telcos to register their prepaid subscribers. In total, between Globe (Telecom) and ourselves (PLDT/Smart) we have about 130 million SIM subscribers. Practically everybody in the country has a cellphone and so if you register you can have a census of everybody,” he said.
Pangilinan also said that the group, which is present in most economic sectors in the country from transportation to utilities to power, is willing to sponsor the crafting of a national supply chain blueprint that will focus on food.
“Just focus on the food, the raw material going to the food and the logistics that bring the food to the market especially to the NCR [National Capital Region]. That’s a project that we would like to sponsor with both the UP (University of the Philippines) and Ateneo’s economics [department] to prepare that blueprint so in case something does happen, the government will be able to track the trucks that need to be encoded, like this Rapid Pass,” he said.