The national telecoms regulator in the Philippines, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), yesterday published its latest draft recommendations on the minimum speed of broadband connections in the country. However, the watchdog’s latest Memorandum Order (MO) left out a controversial clause that if ratified, would have allowed local operators to impose daily download caps on users. The surprise omission between the last revision – in December 2010 – and the one published on 12 January surrounded the removal of the following clause:
‘Whereas, it has been observed that few subscribers/users connect to the internet for unreasonably long period[s] of time depriving other users from connecting to the internet; now, therefore … service providers may set the maximum volume of data allowed per subscriber/user per day.’