In the panel "The Importance of an Integrated and Connected Latin America", moderated by Mariana Rodríguez Zani, director of Convergencialatina, representatives of Latin America agreed that the economy is digital and regionalism should be promoted over bilateralism. One of the most emphatic was Sebastián Rovira, ECLAC's Economic Affairs Officer, who called "to take advantage of the specializations of each country, to leave the mercantilist vision of integration and to deepen in science and technology, productive development, creation of regional companies. Beyond political dialogue, it is important that it be done from the bottom up".

The head of the Agencia Nacional de Espectro de Colombia (National Spectrum Agency of Colombia), Martha Suárez, agreed to highlight the value of alliances between peers, at a technical level, as ANE did with Anatel of Brazil, with specific points of joint work and compliance dates. And she proposed to make joint decisions about IoT, for example in spectrum determinations.

As specific outstanding accounts to be addressed from a regional economy, common procedures, spectrum harmonization, equipment homologation and integrated customs were mentioned. Tadeu Viana, CALA sales director for Corning, commented on the difficulties they have in this regard due to its factories in the region (three in Reynosa, Mexico, with 14,000 employees and another one in Rio de Janeiro, with 600): "We are 600 million inhabitants in a block, we need to unify procedures", he claimed.

Not only infrastructure

In the panel there was consensus on the uses that have been given to connectivity infrastructure: in the words of Oscar León, executive secretary of Citel, "the uses are not what we expected. Access to broadband came to schools but then it is used for social networking. We focused our efforts on infrastructure, rather than on issues related to supply and demand for the use of that technology, the services we assemble, knowledge of rights on the part of the user", said Leon.

For Rovira, from ECLAC, we need to advance in e-commerce, in aspects such as: elimination of roles in cross-border trade, postal reliability and financial inclusion (only Brazil, Chile and Trinidad & Tobago are advanced in this last issue). "On the total of e-commerce in the region, only 3% corresponds to wholesale e-commerce", he warned.

eLAC 2020 Agenda

Out of 34 Latin American countries, seven do not have a digital agenda, or at least a long-term strategy for applying best practices, as Leon pointed out in Futurecom 2017. To advance on a platform for the entire region, one of the instances of the next year is eLac Digital Agenda 2020, which will be presented in Cartegana in next April. Rovira advanced some of its pillars, such as infrastructure for IoT, transformation and digital economy, digital government, culture of inclusion and digital skills, emerging technologies for sustainable development, and governance (cybersecurity and data protection).