MANILA, Philippines—About 30 percent of the country have poor or unstable cellphone connectivity and will use satellite transmission in the May 10 elections, officials of the Commission on Elections and Smartmatic-TIM Corp. said.
“Yes, [30 percent have no connectivity] but it doesn’t mean that we cannot use PCOS [Precinct Count Optical Scan] there,” Larrazabal told reporters yesterday. The other 70 percent will be using the mobile networks as a mode of its transmission.
“Let me just point out that it doesn’t mean that these areas, this 30 percent, we can no longer transmit the results, we can still transmit the results using the satellite,” Larrazabal explained.
In areas where there is no cellphone connectivity, the Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) will be used to transmit the results from the precincts to the canvassing centers.
Gene Gregorio, spokesman for Smartmatic, identified the provinces that lack the necessary telecommunication facilities a Abra, Benguet, Samar, Leyte, Zamboanga and Tawi-tawi. The total number of voters in the six provinces is at least 3 million, according to the Comelec.
Comelec data as of March 2009 said Abra has a total of 147, 615 voters; Benguet has 328,010 voters; Samar has 442,662 voters; Leyte with 997, 244, Zamboanga 936,797 and Tawi-Tawi with 156,027.
Smartmatic TIM has already purchased 5,000 BGAN apparatus for use in areas where there will be no cellphone transmission.
During the field tests recently, some PCOS machines, which record, count, and transmit the tallies, failed to send the reports to the next servers, raising the specter of failed elections on May 10.
In cases where the machine won’t work, the PCOS technician is allowed to replace the SIM card of the machine.
Larrazabal noted that the Comelec is mandated to automate all stages of the counting and transmission results. The possibility of having manual elections, he stressed, is unlikely.
“Yes, [30 percent have no connectivity] but it doesn’t mean that we cannot use PCOS [Precinct Count Optical Scan] there,” Larrazabal told reporters yesterday. The other 70 percent will be using the mobile networks as a mode of its transmission.
“Let me just point out that it doesn’t mean that these areas, this 30 percent, we can no longer transmit the results, we can still transmit the results using the satellite,” Larrazabal explained.
In areas where there is no cellphone connectivity, the Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) will be used to transmit the results from the precincts to the canvassing centers.
Gene Gregorio, spokesman for Smartmatic, identified the provinces that lack the necessary telecommunication facilities a Abra, Benguet, Samar, Leyte, Zamboanga and Tawi-tawi. The total number of voters in the six provinces is at least 3 million, according to the Comelec.
Comelec data as of March 2009 said Abra has a total of 147, 615 voters; Benguet has 328,010 voters; Samar has 442,662 voters; Leyte with 997, 244, Zamboanga 936,797 and Tawi-Tawi with 156,027.
Smartmatic TIM has already purchased 5,000 BGAN apparatus for use in areas where there will be no cellphone transmission.
During the field tests recently, some PCOS machines, which record, count, and transmit the tallies, failed to send the reports to the next servers, raising the specter of failed elections on May 10.
In cases where the machine won’t work, the PCOS technician is allowed to replace the SIM card of the machine.
Larrazabal noted that the Comelec is mandated to automate all stages of the counting and transmission results. The possibility of having manual elections, he stressed, is unlikely.
No comments:
Post a Comment