Rural health facilities get P53 million for satellite internet

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June 9, 2026 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is putting up satellite internet in over 300 rural health facilities, allocating P52.66 million for the project.

Based on its invitation to bid, the DICT is looking for a contractor to undertake the Provision of Internet Access via Low Earth Orbit Satellites (PIALEOS) for rural health units.

The project covers the connection of more than 300 sites across the archipelago to low earth orbit (LEO) satellites for 150 days of service coverage.

The rural health facilities are located all over the Philippines, with many of them operating in areas where traditional networks, such as cellular towers, are hard to build. Thus, the DICT is tapping the satellite option in connecting them to the internet.

Based on the DICT’s specifications, the service must deliver a minimum speed of 100 Mbps per site and an upload speed of at least 10 Mbps. The provider must also allocate each unit with up to two TB of data monthly.

Further, the DICT capped the latency, or the amount of time to transfer data, at 60 milliseconds.

“The service provider shall design, supply, deliver, install, and commission a highly-secure and a highly-resilient LEO satellite digital infrastructure that delivers internet access at each designated location,” the invitation read.

For hardware, the contractor must provide each site with one LEO satellite terminal, two outdoor access points, one indoor access point, a branch router switch and a data communication box.

The DICT is holding a pre-bid conference for the PIALEOS for rural health units tomorrow, June 10. Afterward, the agency will close the submissions and open the proposals on June 22.

Apart from this, the DICT is also bidding out a P39.9-million project for the lease of dark fiber in the Luzon bypass infrastructure.

The project includes the installation of fiber cables between the National Fiber Backbone and internet service providers.

There will be two sites for the project – one in Baler, Aurora, the other in Cabanatuan City – and the contractor will maintain the lease for at least 12 months.

The DICT will conduct a pre-bid conference on June 11, and the bids will be opened on June 24.