A small percentage of the Commission on Elections (Comelec)’s 74,000 clustered precincts located in several areas in the country’s three major islands has been seen as one of critical points in vote tabulation as they lack the necessary telecommunications facilities to enable them to connect with the poll body’s regional and national offices.

But both the Comelec and Smartmatic Philippines, which undertake the country’s first automated polling system, said they would use what they called as Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) in those areas lacking connectivity or inaccessible to telecom services.

“Maliit lang ang nakita namin na walang access (just a small number of precincts have no access to telecommunications services),” Renato Garcia, an information technology consultant tapped by the Comelec, said after Smartmatic completed its survey of the clustered precincts’ locations.

How many clustered precincts unserved by telecommunication facilities Garcia did not say. But a Comelec official earlier had made a guesstimate and said that could be in the neighborhood of 25 percent.

Garcia, however, allayed fears of possible hitch in automated vote tabulation as he explained

that: “We already acquired 5,000 BGAN and we will use in these areas.”

Garcia did not give much details on areas lacking in connectivity, but he said there were some in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao – the country’s major islands.

Gene Gregorio, spokesman for Smartmatic, confirmed that they already completed last week the survey that would help them determine the areas with telecommunications facilities, the data on which were deemed vital in the conduct of the upcoming fully automated elections.

“We have completed the survey,” Gregorio said.

Gregorio added they already submitted the results of the survey last Friday with the Comelec, but declined to give details of the results of the survey.

Gregorio said they should first seek the permission of Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, chairman of the steering committee on poll automation, before they could divulge any details on the output of the survey.

Prior to the conduct of the survey, Jeannie Flororito, director of Comelec’s Information Technology
, revealed that about 25 percent of the areas nationwide lacked the communications infrastructure needed for its transmission system.

Smartmatic earlier said that they would complete the survey in one month or from October to November but they failed to meet their target and instead finished the survey within a period of four months.

During the two field test conducted last week, the suppliers used two mobile networks
and BGAN in transmitting the results of the pre-shaded ballots.

The two field test conducted in four schools in Pateros town in Metro Manila failed but the Comelec still declared the field testing a success since it was proven that the system works and that the malfunction was due to SIM card that they used.

The Comelec will use 82,200 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines that were manufactured in China.

Source :
By Marie A. Surbano
02/01/2010
http://www.tribune.net.ph/headlines/20100201hed5.html