Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Bill to declare Internet access as essential public service advances to Senate

In October, the Plenary of the House of Representatives unanimously approved the initiative: it foresees fixed Internet service to be considered as “home public service”.

The person who promoted the project, called 'Internet Law as an essential and universal public service', was Rodrigo Rojas, representative of the political party Partido Liberal of the House for Boyacá. In this way, it will seek to permanently extend, that is, beyond the context raised by Covid-19, what is provided by Decree 464/2020, which had declared telecommunications (including Internet access) an essential service during the pandemic.

It is expected the provision of fixed Internet service to be considered a “home public service”, that is to say, that it has the same status as electric power services, gas distribution, among others. Said service is defined in the bill as one "whose purpose is the permanent connection of Internet data through a fiber optic, coaxial, or similar network with bandwidth" (art. 5). The mobile Internet service is excepted, which is governed by Law 37 of 1993.

This means, for example, that when building a home, in addition to having access to energy and gas, it shall have a state-of-the-art Internet connection.

Other issues that stand out from the initiative are these that follow:

- That an uninterrupted provision of the service is guaranteed, avoiding suspension due to financial difficulties.

- That the necessary actions be carried out for the adaptation and maintenance of the telecommunications networks and infrastructure.

- Control, regulate or freeze the rates charged for vulnerable or rural populations under exceptional circumstances such as those we face today.

From now on, the initiative will go to the Senate, which will have six months to regulate and implement the law. Meanwhile, according to the Ministry of Labor, more than 6 million people currently tele-work. At the educational level, a study by the Laboratorio de Economía de la Educación (LEE) (Laboratory of Economics of Education), of the university Universidad Javeriana, revealed that 96% of the country's municipalities could not implement virtual lessons because less than half of the ten million public school students (about 37%) have a computer and Internet at home.

Among other data on connectivity in Colombia, on average, in rural areas, 6.7% of households with people attending the school system, between the ages of 5 and 18, have access to the Internet.

Proposal. The Cámara Colombiana de Informática y Telecomunicaciones (CCIT) (Colombian Chamber of Computing and Telecommunications) presented public and regulatory policy proposals to reactivate the post-pandemic economy through technologies. Specifically, they suggest: incentives for capital injection; allocate municipal budgets for technological modernization; have an investment and implementation plan for the Internet of Things (IoT); reduce the economic compensation for the use of the spectrum, apply new models for the temporary allocation of frequencies and activate a scheme of subsidies for fixed broadband and pay TV for low-income users.

Within this, they suggest extending the elimination of VAT for certain mobile plans and in relation to the previous point, they propose to reduce the economic consideration for the right to use the radioelectric spectrum, in order to optimize the costs associated with the provision of services and the deployment of the associated infrastructure.

At the same time, they called for the implementation of innovative schemes for the temporary allocation of spectrum, point-to-point links and mobile radio communications, to promote the deployment of infrastructure in not served areas.

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