What is the name of your organization?
Nexlogic Telecommunications Inc.
What is the name of your solution?
Community Connect
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Empowering communities through connectivity, unlocking digital opportunities for all.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Silang, Cavite the Philippines
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
PHL
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
We are addressing the critical issue of the digital divide, specifically targeting indigent and underserved communities where families must often prioritize basic needs like food and healthcare over internet access. In the Philippines, approximately 59% of the population belong to socio-economic classes D and E, equating to over 60 million people who frequently lack reliable internet connectivity. This disparity severely limits access to quality education, employment opportunities, healthcare information, and government services, perpetuating cycles of poverty and exclusion. Globally, nearly 2.7 billion people remain offline, primarily in developing regions, amplifying social and economic inequalities. Factors contributing to this issue include the high cost of traditional broadband services, inadequate infrastructure in rural and marginalized urban areas, and a lack of affordable connectivity solutions. Our solution directly tackles these barriers by implementing cost-effective Local Area Networks (LANs), significantly reducing connectivity expenses, and providing stable, high-quality internet access. This approach not only bridges the connectivity gap but also fosters socio-economic development by enabling communities to participate actively in the digital economy.
What is your solution?
Strategic partnerships with local government units are central to the model. LGUs not only fund and support the initiative by covering a one-time connection fee for each indigent household, thus minimizing the financial burden on marginalized families, but they also have a vested interest in digitizing their operations. This project leverages the LGUs’ need for robust digital infrastructure originally established to connect schools, barangays, and public safety systems like CCTV and maximizes its utility by extending connectivity to indigent households and sharing excess daytime bandwidth during off-peak hours. This dual use of infrastructure lowers costs for all stakeholders while enhancing operational efficiency.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Community Connect specifically targets the lowest income D and E socio-economic classes, which make up around 59% of the population in the Philippines. These households simply cannot afford a regular monthly internet subscription. For them, the only viable path to connectivity is effectively a free or heavily subsidized internet service. Public Wi-Fi access points often fail to serve them, as these are mostly located outside their neighborhoods, while most people work and study from home. Many of these indigent households are also micro-entrepreneurs selling homemade products or offering small services. Within six months of being connected, we have seen transformative outcomes: a 14-year-old student passionate about hamsters learned how to raise and breed them through YouTube and now sells them; a mother who used to sell frozen goods door-to-door now uses Facebook Marketplace to reach more customers; and in one extraordinary case, a tricycle driver who lost his job during the pandemic began painting secondhand motorcycle parts, a craft he developed online, and now paints airplane parts for a living.
https://youtu.be/oOZZ2n52xwA