The Internet's 10 Most Influential Filipinos

Willy Gan

Profile.
Willy Gan is one of the first movers and implementors of the Internet in the Philippines. His actions coupled with that of other key IT leaders sparked the flame that started the Internet revolution here. Gan is on of the founding memebers of PHNet and chairperson of Mosaic Communications, the first commercial ISP in the Philippines.

Why he's influential.

The Internet's 10 Most Influential Filipinos     The Survey Manny Amador Jim Ayson Fernando Contreras Joel Disini Willy Gan Ken Ilio William Padolina William Torres Leandro Verceles Jr. Rodolfo Villarica

Gan relates that in late 1993, he was involved in the planning, designing and setting up here of PHNet, the first ever Philippine academic network that resides in the Internet. A lot of IT people know that PHNet was the first project to leverage on the Internet for its members to communicate among themselves. His involvement, together with IT luminaries such as Rodolfo Villarica, Dr. William Torres and the others paved the way for both government and private sectors to look more into the possibility of using the Internet to enhance communication. Seeing that the Internet could do so much more, Gan together with William Torres, established the first commercial ISP in mid 1994 and christened it Mosaic Communications. Gan told the Web that they established Mosaic or Mozcom to create the information superhighway in the Philippines. "Since we have the networking knowhow, it was the natural thing for us to do," says Gan. Their action and the success of Mozcom fueled the entrepreneurial spirit of Filipino businessmen to go on providing Internet access themselves. There are now more than 120 Internet service providers in the Philippines.

Vision for the Net.
Gan says that the Internet is the only one aspect of the goal of creating an internetwork. "We would like to see more usage of our network in general communication such as voice and video for corporate use. In the future, the current data network will eventually dominate all network usage including that of the traditional voice network," says Gan.