First and second class municipalities had been included by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) in the roll out of its free Wi-Fi Internet Access in Public Places project to better reach the class three to six municipalities which were the original target beneficiaries of the project. The decision to include class one and two municipalities initially stemmed from the low participation in the procurement of providers for the original 967 beneficiary municipalities. A reason cited by the providers was the low price of allocated budget for contract for the various municipalities. “We intend to increase the budget allocation for municipal connectivity for the project, by around 50 percent. Likewise, we will also be including class one and two municipalities in order to better reach classes three to six, the ones who need Internet connectivity the most,” Louis Casambre, the agency’s undersecretary for information and communications technology office, said. The total number of beneficiary municipalities now stands at 1,435.NEIL A. ALCOBER
