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| Mr. Christopher Gudia, (3rd from left with notebook computer) Principal of Tubigon West Central School in Bohol shows off a computer to connected to the Internet with TV White Space (TVWS) to visitors to the School, which is one of the pilot sites in Bohol for TVWS. Others in the Photo include DOST-ICT Office Region 7 Director Jose Bagulaya, Bohol Provincial Government Representative Glen Doloritos, DOST ICT Office Deputy Executive Director Bettina Quimson, Momo Kanouni of IXS for All, Undersecretary Louis Casambre of the DOST-ICT Office and Nityo Infotech Managing Director Roy del Rosario. |
P3 TV White
Space Partnership Wins Impact Award
The U.S. Department
of State Secretary’s Office of Global Partnerships, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business Institute for Business in Society, and Concordia today announced TV White Space Partnership in the Danajon Reef as a model
public-private partnership (P3) and winner of the second annual P3 Impact Award during the 2015 Concordia Summit in New York
City. U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry revealed the TV White Space
partnership as the winner, appearing remotely via video satellite.
TV White Space
Partnership in the Danajon Reef — a public-private partnership between
Microsoft, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the
Philippines' Department of Science and Technology’s Information and
Communications Technology Office (DOST-ICTO) and Bureau of Fisheries and
Aquatic Resources — piloted, for the first time in the Philippines, a new
technology that taps unused television broadcast frequencies (“TV White Space”)
to extend high-speed, wireless Internet access to remote parts of the country.
Under this
partnership, USAID tested the use of TV White Space to enable a mobile, online
system to formally register fisherfolk in Bohol. The Bohol province was
previously one of the most biodiverse and productive marine areas in the Philippines,
but extreme overfishing over the past five decades has decreased the fish
population by 90 percent. Registering the fisherfolk provides the information
necessary to create a plan for sustainable fishery use, not only critical to
the survival of the marine life, but also to the human populations depending on
them. Registration is a key step toward sustainable fisheries management, and
allows fisherfolk to access vital government services, including health care,
insurance and poverty alleviation funds.
Since TV White
Space connectivity was established in April 2014, over 16,000 fisherfolk have
been registered in the pilot municipalities, with almost 4,000 of those
registrants exclusively registered through TV White Space technology. As a
result, government counterparts have begun to use this new registration data to
design and deploy better fisheries management interventions
The partnership
has also provided free Internet access for 20,000 Philippines citizens who
previously did not have any. Because entire communities now have access to
high-speed Internet, public institutions such as medical clinics and schools
are able to provide improved services. Following these successes, the
government has expanded the use of TV White Space to other locations in the
Philippines to support its goal of providing wireless Internet access to 99
percent of its population.
TV White Space
Partnership in the Danajon Reef is highlighted in a special edition of the
Darden School’s thought-leadership publication Darden Ideas to Action,
provided at the Concordia Summit. The TV White Space Partnership in the
Danajon Reef will also receive a full scholarship to attend a week-long Darden Executive
Education course.
The additional award finalists
included: Partners in Food Solutions-TechnoServe Alliance, The Nature Conservancy-Dow Chemical Company Collaboration, Madagascar: Improving Water and Sanitation Services to Low-Income
Communities and U.S. Global Development Lab’s Partnering to Accelerate Entrepreneurship
(PACE) Initiative and VilCap Investments: Catalyzing Investment to Democratize
Global Entrepreneurship.
For further
information, please contact the Secretary’s Office of Global Partnerships
(S/GP) at partnerships@state.gov
or visit http://www.state.gov/s/partnerships/gpw/p3/
. For media inquiries, please contact Natalie Alm at almn@state.gov.
Follow @GPatState,
@IBiS_Darden,
@ConcordiaSummit,
and #P3Impact
on Twitter for updates.
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