The province provides free Internet in 95% of its territory and advances with the provision of fiber to the home with which it intends to achieve the same coverage within two years.

The initiative will be developed under the name of "San Luis a 1.000," the program that was presented in the last week of October, with the aim of bringing this technology to homes, businesses, companies and consortia and which is in charge of the San Luis Agency for Science, Technology and Society that acts under the orbit of the local Ministry of Science and Technology.

The agency was created at the initiative of the portfolio led by Alicia Bañuelos with the mission of executing all provincial plans on connectivity.

Bañuelos pointed out to Convergencialatina that the program responds to a demand for a higher quality service and bandwidth that arose with the Covid-19 pandemic. Strictly speaking, the works began two years ago with the deployment of the FTTX work, from fiber to the Wi-Fi antennas prior to the home service.

The plan has three differentiated axes according to the sector it is aimed at: Homes at 1,000, Commerce at 1,000, and Neighborhoods at 1,000. In the first week of November, work began on the first two axes. Commerce at 1.000 was already being implemented in large companies and industrial parks, but now the works have begun that will take it to neighborhood shops. The Neighborhoods at 1,000 axis points to private neighborhoods and consortiums and deserves a different approach from the regulatory point of view, so it will be the last one to tackle.

The works for Homes at 1,000 and Shops at 1,000 will be financed with a ANR (Non-Refundable Contribution) of US$ 2 million granted by Enacom with money from the FSU (Universal Service Fund). The province will contribute another US$ 2 million to round off a total financing of US$ 4 million.

The objective is to first cover areas of the peripheries and then move towards central populations. And bring broadband to towns like El Volcán, with 800 homes and 1,700 people. The first locations to be reached will be Villa de la Quebrada, Nogolí, La Calera and Los Manantiales, in the department of Belgrano; La Punilla and Justo Daract, in Pedernera; La Toma and Fraga, in Pringles; El Volcán, in Pueyrredón; and San Martín and Paso Grande, in San Martín.

The company Trans won the tender to deploy in these eleven locations that by the end of the year several of these populations will have FTTH. The planning projected a delay of six months to cover the populations but the fulfillment of those times is subject to the arrival of equipment purchased abroad.

WiFi will continue being free. The speed of this service is between 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps in the case of 2.0 antennas and between 10 and 50 Mbps in 3.0 environments. These are good useful levels for the home service of the pre-pandemic but the need to work from home and others that were generated in Commerce and other small companies demand higher speeds.

Consequently, neighbors will access fiber to the home with a speed of 1,000 Mbps for which they will pay US$ 25 per month. The plan is to later continue with other locations. But to tender that work they will wait until the first one is fully deployed.

Regarding the strategic valuation of San Luis at 1,000, Bañuelos pointed out that the plan aims to provide the service demanded by people who moved to homes due to the pandemic, in the same way as businesses and other SMEs whose demand was also modified based on the new normal.

The ultimate goal is for the entire San Luis province to have access to FTTH by 2023. He explained that “the plan is for the fiber to reach the home. We seek to help businesses to be better connected for the new stage, that they begin to have a greater number of customers from having better connectivity.”

Large companies have had this service since 2017 but in this segment the prices are different. Currently, these companies pay the equivalent of US$ 3 plus VAT per mega and represents about nine gigabytes of consumption, about 25% of the total for the province.

Base. In the scenery of local infrastructure some numbers stand out. The province has 130,000 homes connected to the Internet, including places, towns and cities with more than 20 thousand inhabitants; in San Luis there are 1,700 WiFi antennas; there is also a 4,500 km fiber optic network divided between a 1,100 km urban section and a 3,400 km interurban section.

Minister Bañuelos talked about a backbone that acts as the backbone of the local network with a download speed of 25 Mbps.

The province also has 40 locations with FTTx technology; More than 3,200 indoor Wi-Fi antennas with fiber optic connection in schools, hospitals, security centers and public administration of the provincial State and more than 300 specific dedicated telecommunications services for industrial, agricultural, livestock, services and tourism sectors of the province.

Furthermore, the Aprendo Igual application, from the University of La Punta, won recognition in the Champion of WSIS 2021 awards in the ICT Applications category; e-Learning; and the same distinction was awarded to the Epidemiological Surveillance 4.0 program