Telecommunications Undersecretary Romina Garrido made a presentation to the Senate Transport and Telecommunications Committee on the WOM case and the collection of guarantee bonds related to the deployment of the National Fiber Optic project, totaling US$13.9 million.

Garrido presented details of the report by the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic (Contraloría General de la República, CGR), which criticized the previous administration for filing charges for violations rather than collecting guarantee bonds in response to WOM’s breaches.

The undersecretary said the CGR report found that insufficient replacement guarantees had been accepted and said the company would have to “reinstate a guarantee bond to once again cover the five macrozones committed under the project. This guarantee must be submitted to Subtel by Sept. 14.”

Garrido explained that within one year, if there are new breaches in maintaining the fiber-optic network, the Telecommunications Undersecretariat (Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones, Subtel) could collect the guarantee again.

The senators will request a special session in September to monitor the company’s progress, both regarding the recovery of the National Fiber Optic network and the 5G project.

WOM said it remains “fully willing to cooperate in any forums the authorities deem necessary to present our arguments (...) Regarding the collection of the guarantee bonds linked to the National Fiber Optic project, it is surprising that this resolution was issued without a prior proceeding in which WOM was heard, without providing a substantiated assessment of the alleged breaches and using a criterion different from the one the regulatory authorities themselves have applied in previous instances involving similar situations,” the company concluded.