The emergence of OTTs and the demand for traffic generated by big tech were the axes of a regulation and operators panel.

Lina María Duque, Executive Director of the Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) of Colombia, said that “since 2017, in Colombia we have been studying the pressure of use of the networks generated by OTTs and other platforms such as social networks.”

She also pointed out that the CRC has requested information from the platforms because they want to “understand the problem” and did not rule out that this information could help formulate a specific regulation.

Karim Lesina, Chief External Affairs Officer of Millicom, said that operators must “generate a new business model that guarantees return on investment.”

Lesina warned that regulation works like “geological layers” that do not allow transparency or equity since the latest entrants - in this case the OTTs - lack regulation and compete with fully regulated players.

In this sense, she appealed to an action that, instead of regulating OTTs, aims to eliminate regulations on operators, something like freeing up their energies to allow them to venture into new businesses given that technological cycles have been reduced to periods that make the return on investment very difficult.

Martín Caravia, Global Strategy Director of Vrio, expressed himself in a similar sense and warned that among the great challenges around pay TV and the audiovisual entertainment industry is the impact on margins due to the expansion of the offer produced by connectivity and the entry of platforms.

He pointed out that one way to improve the income of traditional operators is to modernize copyright legislation that prevents content creators from imposing arbitrary prices on their products, eroding the results of distributors.