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While I have already made a recommendation on which broadband internet service provider to subscribe to (with some caveats, of course) based on our experience and feedback of our readers in the past months, there's just so much to wish for in the current state of internet access in the Philippines.

Our internet access speed; test taken 1 March 2011

I did mention in that article that our current access speed is satisfactory to meet our needs as bloggers (no one in the family is an online gamer and we're not into so much downloads).  Or is it me merely lowering my expectations knowing that there are other parameters that I should also be concern about, such as reliability of connection and cost of service?  Yes, it most likely is an adjustment of my standards to what is achievable for now.

The above data of our internet access speed was taken from speedtest.net.  In the same site, rankings of download and upload speeds by continent and by country are also available.  The Philippines in the screenshot below with 1.5 mbps download speed is in the 141st place, which puts us within the bottom quartile (25%) of the 186 total countries in the list.

Global ranking of download and upload speeds courtesy of speedtest.net (click table to enlarge).

This despite having an estimated 30 million Filipinos online, because 69% of these actually use internet cafes for access (according to Yahoo-Nielsen Net Index 2010).  Therefore, small internet cafes will continue to be an important contributor to economic growth of the country if access at home, in school or office does not improve significantly soon.  It's been shown in a World Bank study that a 10% increase in broadband penetration accelerates growth for developing countries by 1.38%.  This is an illustration of how access to information can boost economic activity. Therefore, making the internet accessible to many, if not all, becomes the new equalizer. 

But internet cafes are often clustered in urban centers.  So how about populations in more remote areas?  As usual, their prospects for economic growth will have to wait.