Free Public Wireless Network Provided To Philippine Municipality By DDC Reports Public Safety And Connectivity Amid Pandemic As Greatest Successes
Global business process outsourcer DDC supports and sustains public health and safety amid pandemic through delivery of “PaWi-FI Ha Palo”, a free Wi-Fi network available to all municipality residents in Palo, Philippines.
March 24, 2021 — PaWi-FI Ha Palo was the first free wireless telecommunications network to be provided to an entire town in the Philippines, and its first year active proved to be essential to community health and safety. Delivered by worldwide business process outsourcing company The DDC Group, PaWi-FI Ha Palo has served as a critical component to protecting a portion of the country’s rural population from the pandemic.
The network, PaWi-FI Ha Palo, officially launched in early 2020, giving free access to endless information, knowledge, and learning, while simultaneously perpetuating connectivity, communication, and sharing among family members, friends and communities across the entire town of Palo.
DDC’s initial vision for PaWi-FI Ha Palo was simple: To improve lives by removing limits to the amounts information and the rate at which it can be retrieved for Filipinos.
Little did the company realise that within weeks of turning the network live, a pandemic would disrupt the education process nationwide, requiring all students to complete classwork at home. “The free Wi-Fi has become a heavily relied on resource and is a great help to all students within Palo who have remained committed to continue their education during the pandemic,” said DDC Philippines spokesperson and PaWi-FI Ha Palo project coordinator Joel Marmita.
Deployment of the network began in a barangay neighbouring a local DDC FPO campus, Pawing Palo Leyte, as a pilot and testing area for the free wi-fi project; it now expands to the whole of Municipality of Palo.
The installation team started with a simple tower approximately 50 ft. in height to reach the Internet line from the nearest DDC FPO campus. Originally called “PaWi-FI Ha Pawing,” the programme has been renamed PaWi-FI Ha Palo as it serves all barangays in the municipality and grants access to users in schools, barangay halls, villages and even some households.
Since network activation, DDC has improved the line of site of each and every barangay where devices are located to make the network more stable.
COVID-19 cases and recoveries that the municipality has recorded are posted on the landing page of the free Wi-Fi network, serving as an informative advertisements. Precautionary measures and protocol that the local and national governments implemented are also included.
Additional benefits of the free Wi-Fi project for the community of Palo can be summarised briefly in three major categories: Education, Connection, and Health/Safety Information.
1. Arming Education with Advances in Technology
PaWi-FI Ha Palo is useable in every school in the of town of Palo, which means that teachers can now modernise their classrooms and enjoy the benefits that the Internet presents to education at zero cost. Curriculum and learning exercises are now more interactive and collaborative. In addition, educators are able to send and receive reports as needed between other educators, school supervisors, students and families as necessary.
As some schools have suspended in-person learning or are leveraging hybrid at-home/at-school schedules due to the pandemic, network access throughout the barangays has become crucial to academic progress.
Students no longer need to spend money at an hourly rate in their local Internet cafes to simply complete their school work. Now, they are able to log into PaWi-FI Ha Palo to search, stream and download files and videos needed to complete school assignments – as well as convene online in virtual study groups and enrich their learning together – from the safety and comfort of their own homes.
2. Connecting Residents to Those Who Matter Most
Before the launch of this free Wi-Fi network project, most residents had to coordinate the logistics and budget of their communications cadence with others around weak – or simply nonexistent – telecommunications infrastructure. PaWi-FI Ha Palo enables barangay residents in Palo to engage and maintain contact with loved ones who are not also residents of their barangays or who they cannot see due to social distancing and quarantine protocols.
Reducing the expense for cellular usage plans, this new network empowers residents with the freedom and flexibility to leverage applications that only require Wi-Fi, such as Facebook Messenger, to remain in contact with those they cannot see in-person due to the pandemic. According to Chairwoman of barangay Campetic Palo,, Hon. Amalia F. Sornito, this is key as many families in the barangays of Palo have loved ones studying and working in other regions of the Philippines, or outside of the country entirely.
3. Rapidly Relaying Important Community Information
The landing page of PaWi-FI Ha Palo is optimised to feature critical information for members of the Palo community.
Upon securing a successful connection to the free Wi-Fi, users are automatically taken to a landing page, on which important, immediate news and alerts are published. These include, but are not limited to: COVID-19 updates and alerts, local government announcements (such as voter registration details, holiday declarations, executive orders, etc.), geohazard preparedness and notifications for events, weather updates and tracking maps, safety guidelines, and more.
This initiative began as part of DDC’s global corporate social responsibility initiative entitled, “DDC 30 Days Of Good”, in which all divisions of DDC participated in making a tangible impact globally by contributing to their local communities during the company’s 30th year of business. To learn more, read: [30 Days of Good release hyperlink].
To learn more about PaWi-Fi Ha Palo, including access instructions, users may visit the network’s Facebook page
About The DDC Group
The DDC Group is a worldwide network of business process outsourcing companies with over 30 years of proven business process excellence, which has guided its clients through globalisation, market fluctuations and technological determinism.
The company’s wide array of resources, innovative technologies, proprietary workflows, subject matter expertise, and deep connections with key influencers in strategic regions and sectors allows its business units to deliver services in a uniquely flexible and reliable framework that maintains both unyielding business continuity and service level agreements despite market volatility.
Across all of DDC’s member companies, 5,000 industry-trained subject matter experts apply their decades of experience to achieve compelling results for each client globally. To learn more, visit www.theddcgroup.com
