Telcos worried about 2010 elections

The country’s two largest telecommunications companies, or telcos, have expressed worry about the automated elections next year, because the technical requirements have yet to be issued by the consortium Smartmatic-TIM. Globe Telecom Inc. and Smart Communications Inc. said that the terms of reference for the first fully automated elections in the country ware important to determine their scope of work.

An official of Globe, who requested not to be named, said that the terms of reference ware needed to determine the requirements of Smartmatic-TIM and the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

“Various tests are required to assure that there will be no interruptions on election day,” the Globe executive said.

Smart still clueless

An official of Smart, on the other hand, said the company has not been informed of the technical requirements of the 2010 elections.

“We need to prepare our network,” the Smart official added.

Smartmatic is partnering with the local telcos for the use of their Internet facilities with the assurance that in return, telcos will provide the necessary services such as Internet connection.

Smartmatic along with partner TIM earlier bagged the P11.3-billion project for the 2010 elections.

Under the contract, Comelec will lease about 82,200 Precinct Counting Optical Scan (PCOS) machines from the Smartmatic-TIM consortium.

The optical scanner is a paper-based voting system that reads marked ballot fed into it and tallies the votes electronically. After which, the results would be automatically transmitted.

An official of Smartmatic-TIM earlier said that with full automation, about 80 percent of the elections results would be available within five to six hours after the voting precincts closed.–DARWIN G. AMOJELAR, Manila Times