The Philippines has seen a slow down in overall consumer spending, which has also been felt by ISPs, especially during 1998 as the Asia Pacific region faced an economic crunch. But in 1999, the economy rebounded and there was a renewed interest in Internet services. One reason for this big jump in new internet subscriptions was the strong government push for internet usage in business and education. An estimated 12% of internet users in this country bought products through the web, and this number is expected to grow by in the following years. Internet shopping is already being implemented in the Philippines with net users using their credit cards to purchase items from abroad. But it is far below the 7% level being recorded in the US. At the onset of the new millennium, Filipinos can already purchase local products from the Internet, with the luxury of not having to line up for goods in stores or supermarkets.

With the country economy facing a positive outlook, many changes are expected to favor ISP growth. Consumers are expected to have more likely to improve their purchasing ability due to high wages, stable inflation rate, affordable credit terms and a stable inflation rate. There will also be increased awareness due to increase in office and school use marketing efforts by ISPs and the convergence of Telco/Cable/ISPs. People will find more relevance in the internet with more localized content or portal strategies for vertical market (Finance, Education, Medicine, Job sites) and growing interest in E-commerce.

Education at your Doorstep
One way to anchor future growth is to tap the education market since a sizeable portion of internet users are students and internet continues to attract the majority of the youth. To boost Education in the internet, a site has to be developed mainly on online teaching ranging from the pre-school up to college level. Students need not to bring a lot of books at home to research and study. All they have to do is surf the information through the Net.

School Internet Program
For those students who cannot afford to purchase a computer, buy a prepaid card to access the net and do not have extra money to go to Internet cafes, public schools administrator can set up a workstation mainly for surfing information related to their studies. Not all the books in the library are updated and students need not to go through the whole book to search the information they need. All they have to do is get subscription to a content provider, say Britannica.com, for them to access. Savings will be generated by the schools. With these, they no longer need to buy the whole set of encyclopedia and other expensive printed materials such as magazines, journals, among other things. With just one click you will get your information from dissecting animals to forming of the human body at a more efficient and affordable price.

Get your International Diploma
Filipinos value Education. Good education is one of the few ways to the ladder of success. Parents, as long as they can afford it and go through extreme measures to do so, send their children to good and reputable schools here or abroad. Not all Filipinos can go to the US to study or any other countries because cost is prohibitive. But the Internet can change all this and serve as our link to the world. What we really need to do is to tie-up with universities and schools in different countries like US to give Philippines an accreditation to access their curriculum in all subjects such as science, math, philosophy, and even advanced studies. With just one click, you will get all the information you need. Not only that, through the net we can do an online chat and tutorials with professors to answer all your questions, the same way a professor and his students do in the classroom. This is not only a one on one chatting experience but also getting immediate answers to all your queries, regardless of where you are in the world or in the various islands of the Philippines. Surely, this is not as expensive as going to the US and very accessible from both a geographic and economic standpoint. Even not having a computer at home can no longer be a barrier since access can be gained through Internet café's. In addition, the data is almost instantaneously updated information through the Net

Information Revolution
Not only students can benefit from the Net. Even professionals can surf information related to their jobs/careers. In fact, a lot of companies get competitive information through the Net

To tap it all, we can start developing the Philippine Educational Site and sub-categorized it to students, professionals, jobless and even working moms. In fact we can get ideas from the four business models we have mentioned earlier and learned from their experiences with regards to content that is on what to offer on the site, we can even sell our old books through amazon.com or eBay and use the money in developing the site., or even start advertising the site to private schools and universities.

We can also take consideration the myth vs reality in marketing in the Net and use these details as our benchmark on what worked and what did not in order to achieve the target market.

The Philippine Educational Site should be built in simple, friendly, trusted, comprehensive destination and has a significant value.