Benjamin “Benjie” Tan, the man who switched on the Cisco router in the Philippines 25 years ago and forever changed the country by connecting it to the Internet, has passed away, Newsbytes.PH reported.
Tan succumbed to cancer on Thursday afternoon at St. Luke’s Medical Center.
Tan had been hospitalised three times this year for pneumonia and for radiotherapy to treat a lymph node mass that grew in his abdomen.
“Benjie was hoping for recovery to finish repairing the WiFi antenna for the benefit of the Aeta community in Porac, Pampanga,” according to Fellow Xavier School alumnus and former tech journalist Edison Ong.
Back in 1994, Tan was working for ComNet, a local supplier of Cisco networking gears. He was tasked with setting up the router at the PLDT main office in Makati, one that would subsequently make him the first person in the Philippines to connect to the Internet.
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Although his significance was undisputed, the modest engineer had always dismissed his role in the country’s Internet history.
Late tech pioneer Jim Ayson wrote in an article, titled The night Benjie Tan hooked up the Philippines to the Internet. “Behind every historic public tech spectacle is the quiet story of the techie working in the background to set things up before the newsreel cameras start rolling. There is a private side to March 29, 1994, which incredibly enough seems to have been left out of much of the numerous newspaper and magazine articles describing the events of that day. Luckily, I managed to corner Benjie Tan, the man behind-the-scenes that day and persuaded him into letting us know what really went on. This is his story.”
The article discusses the story of how Tan worked alone in the wee hours of the morning of March 29, 1994 to link up the Philnet project to Sprint Communications in the US.
Tan was last known to be working for Globe Telecom. Aside from Philnet, Tan also had a stint at Mozcom, the country’s first ISP (Internet service provider).
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Before his untimely passing, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) recognised Tan’s pioneering efforts, during the 25th anniversary of the Philippine Internet this year.
There is no known information on the family and friends he left behind. Rest in Peace, Benjie Tan.
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Photo by Eugenio Pastoral on Unsplash
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