Colombia's government announced a series of regulations and proposed measures on Tuesday to boost the digital economy, including the creation of a strategic ICT department and regulation requiring minimum download speeds of 25Mbps by 2019.
Speaking during a workshop on Colombia's digital economy strategy at the Latin American Telecommunications Congress in Cartagena de Indias, ICT minister David Luna said the government's digital economy roadmap would introduce six regulatory projects, three ICT measures and 11 digital economy actions.
The latter include addressing issues such as taxation, conflict resolution, personal data protection and intellectual property.
The six regulatory projects include studies of the current competitive environment through surveys, net neutrality and how to regulate OTTs like Uber and Netflix.
And the three sector policies seek to monitor and promote the development of IT tools and e-government.
Luna reiterated the ministry's plans announced last year to launch a Digital Economy Observatory aimed at introducing relevant policies and monitoring development of the digital economy in the Andean nation.
He also reaffirmed plans announced by President Juan Manuel Santos during Andicom last September that the IT and telecommunications department of the ICT ministry would be renamed the digital economy department with a more strategic role on promoting the digital economy.
FASTER INTERNET
Reliable and fast internet is at the core of this and Luna pointed out that Akamai's latest state of the internet study shows that in Colombia a low percentage of the population uses high speed internet connections. Some 7.8% of internet users in 2016 had connection speeds of 10Mbps+, compared to 27% in Chile, 25% in Uruguay and 16% in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.
To address that, Colombia will introduce an obligation for operators to offer minimum download speeds of 25Mbps and upload speeds of 5Mbps, starting January 2019.
OTHER TAKEAWAYS
Raul Katz, president of TeleAdvisory and professor of Colombia University, said that Latin America has made important advances in reducing the digital divide and connecting people. However, the region needs to improve its productive processes through digitalization as economies continue to grow slowly.
Pablo Bello, executive director of Asiet, said it is important to have state, not central government policies on developing the digital economy to ensure they are long term.
Germán Darío, director of Colombia's telecoms regulator CRC said that watchdogs have to stop thinking in terms of regulating physical things like hardware and focus on services.
Arun Sundararajan, professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, said that investors in the digital economy should not expect immediate returns as it is a long-term strategy.
Gonzalo Navarro, director of the Latin American Internet Association (ALAI), underscored the importance of building trust in online payments and other digital institutions.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Patrick Nixon
Quelle/Source: Business News Americas, 20.06.2017
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