Anonymous Defaces Philippines Telecom Commission Website Protesting Slow Internet Speeds

[Karamjit]

Anonymous hackers take down the NTC website, again

The website of the Philippines' National Telecom Commission (NTC) has been hacked by the local branch of the Anonymous hacktivism group.

The reason behind this recent operation is the country's abysmal Internet connection speeds, which rank only above Afghanistan, when compared to all other Asian countries.

This wouldn't be a problem if Internet were cheap, but as Anonymous points out, it is not.

"We are calling forth the attention of the NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION for this matter in hand; [...], we are asking for fairness in charging and serving our data services," said the Anonymous message left on NTC's website. "Unlimited should be patterned to its name - 'UNLIMITED'; not 'UNLIMITED with 800MB cap.' A 2MBPS speed should never be a 56kbps. A 98% service reliability should be always on the 98% part, not the 2% one."

The government promised free public WiFi but failed to deliver

As with most of its operations, the group is right when criticizing the government, which promised to provide free public WiFi by the end of 2015, but eventually delayed it for next year.

Government officials are well aware of the country's shameful situation when it comes to Internet connection speeds, and they're hoping that, by providing free Internet, it will also make local ISPs offer better services in response.

The free Internet is scheduled to work at speeds of 256 kbps, and if this is considered by the Government as an impulse for investments, this only comes to show what appalling speeds locals users are paying for.

Currently, Internet access in the Philippines costs $18/Mbps, compared to the global average of $5/Mbps. That's a highway robbery when you take into account the lowly speeds Filipinos are getting, which most of us experienced in the old Dial-Up age.

At the moment, the NTC website has been offline since the hack, which wasn't the first time when it happened. As HackRead points out, the site had been previously taken down in 2006, 2009, and 2013.

From

[jango]

hoping for cheap & faster internet for my country :D

[info999]

ours is worse, $10/mo for 786KB dial-up, f*ck !