Davao ICT master plan for discussion at Summit

The results of the ongoing consultations of key players in the ICT sector will be inputed to a master plan that will set a clear direction with regards business process outsourcing (BPO) businesses in Davao City.

Andrei Fournier, member of the board of advisers of ICT Davao said there has to be clear direction both for the local government unit and the business sector addressing some concens that need to be acted immeditely. And this has to form part of the master plan that will be discussed thoroughly during the Davao ICT Summit on August 6 to 7, 2009.

Among the immediate concern he said is on broadband connection where it is more expensive say for a T1 of 1.5 mbps that would cost about P50,000 to P100,000 monthly which is more than Manila corporate, the cost includes the bringing of the bandwidth from Manila to Davao. The service also has to be improved, he said.

"Putting up the structure here with Davao City considered as the IT hub in the island would save on cost. We need to bring in the Telcos and for them to come up with a disaster recovery plan citing what happened when the line was cut in Bukidnon a month ago causing tremendous damage to the industry," he said.

He said they want broadband networks build newer infrastructures and to also bring down the cost here.

Davao City ranking 4th among the cities in the country as IT destination is an opportunity that should be considered seriously by addressing some problems he said because once not acted might put us down as preferred area.

Power outages that are occasionally experienced here Fourneir noted is an area that has to be studied as this would also affect connectivity.

Davao City right now has five big call centers namely Concentrix, Sutherland, Cybercity, Western Wats and Call Box plus other medium size bringing to 13 the more active ones, he said.

These five big call centers he said are biggest employers of call center agents but these companies also face the problem of lack of middle managers saying that this is also the concern of other prospective investors. Training workers for middle manager positions is one concern that the ICT sector here need to address, he said.

He said for a big size BPO it would need about 20 to 30 middle managers and this estimates include supervisors and team leaders.

Space is also another area to look at as landowners still have to understand the business. This is an area that the city could attract locators because BPOs are looking at better price for space rentals.

He said in Manila cost of rental is about P400 to P600 per sq. m. but here some is offering at P350 to P500 per sq. m., he said.

He said the demand is big and looking at last year's revenues, 2008 registered an earning of 4.8 billion US dollars in the Philippines employing some 650,000 workers. Davao IT call centers agents and support personnel accounted to 60,000 which he said they aim to bring the figure up to 100,000 in 2010. (Digna D. Banzon)