The telecommunications landscape in Latin America is changing by leaps and bounds. What is surprising is that these changes are taking place silently. While the attention of almost all eyes is focused on the differences that can occur in the world of consumption, it is in the corporate sector, in the legal frameworks and in the design of the transport network ecosystem that the new approach can be identified for the transport business. data.
While this is happening, the industry is deafened by claims that are as strong as they are unrealistic. Every new technology is presented as a fulfilled prophecy. What inspires is not his performance, but his arrival, an arrival celebrated with uncertainties of survival. How has it been possible to survive in the face of technological disruption offered by the fashionable toy? They are inconstant toys, with an infinity of faces and shapes, but always giving reason to the apocalyptic discourse that always accompanies us.
One of the silent changes I am referring to occurs without much applause or celebration. Far from the important market, or the voters, its benefit is granted indirectly. Thus, the drastic increase in the deployment of optical fiber is contemplated, not only to connect homes at speeds greater than 1 Gbps, but also those that are intended to support the growth of these connection speeds in all geographies of a country. For example, fiber optic deployments that are no longer exclusive to regional capitals to start connecting cities with smaller populations from Xalapa, Mexico, or Bucaramanga, Colombia, to Salto, Uruguay, or San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic .
However, the increase in infrastructure density is leading governments in the region to expand terrestrial connectivity in previously uncontemplated areas. For example, Brazil is going to install around 12,000 km of river fiber optics in the rivers of the Amazon rainforest, in its Sustainable Integrated Amazon program. This will allow the country to act as a connectivity system, an integration platform, offering capacity services to Amazonian neighbors such as Bolivia and Colombia.
Likewise, historically forgotten regions, such as the Guianas, in northern South America, collaborated in the construction of the Guiana-Suriname Submarine Cable System (SGSCS) and the commitment of private operators to install a second submarine optical cable emulating the coverage of the SGSCS, but adding French Guiana and Trinidad & Tobago to the route of this cable.
This growth in fiber for international data transport is accompanied by the growth in fiber optics for residential connectivity observed in the region. In this way, the case of Brazil in search of a greater number of connected households is replicated in all jurisdictions in the region with countries such as Curaçao, Uruguay or Barbados, with an optical fiber capillarity that exceeds 85% of households. However, these three countries, like the Guianas or Paraguay, also suffer from a disease that negatively affects the provision of services at the local level, the few international outlets for their data traffic.
The increase in the amount of optical fiber, which no one contrasts with the increase in satellite capacity, is accompanied more slowly by the interest of the vast majority of countries in the region in increasing the amount of radio spectrum that can be used to offer mobile services. From Guatemala to Ecuador or Trinidad and Tobago to Jamaica, governments understand the urgency of increasing the amount of radio spectrum given to mobile operators to offer services.
The problem is not the willingness of countries to deliver this input, but the amount that some governments intend to charge for it. This is how we come across Mexico, a country that boasts of having given constitutional status to the Internet by declaring it a human right, but that charges the input to offer this service at prices of radioactive material. While Mexico’s problems with connectivity levels for the most vulnerable go beyond the spectrum issue, the Aztec country is hampered by the lack of a serious national digital strategy, with quantifiable targets and a transparent roadmap.
While this discussion takes place in industry forums or in public consultations that seem to be repeated countless times, in addition to terrestrial networks, we see that traffic growth forecasts drive the increase in kilometers of submarine fiber optic cables that surround the region and transponders that are orbiting the planet earth with satellites of all kinds, the most recent being the low orbit ones with business plans ranging from offering retail services to users who can afford a modem for around US$ 500 and a monthly fee of US$ 99 (excluding VAT), even services to the military forces of different countries in the region, as they have been doing for months in Ukraine.
The arrival of these new operators will undoubtedly have an impact on the regional offer, forcing more than one operator to invest in more advanced technologies that will allow them to compete in rural areas with the new satellite broadband offer. What is not explained is the laughter of the employees cursing and promising that the new satellite offer will reduce the digital gaps.
As can be seen, there is a regional obsession aimed at increasing the existing capacity in data transport. Being able to have everything needed on the ground or in space to support the arrival and expansion of 5G networks that promise to bring Latin America and the Caribbean closer to that connected world that has been so dreamed of. This new mobile generation is so necessary that it has become a matter for the State with mandates, programs and even orders for this to happen.
Hopefully, the strength you hear from these 5G calls comes from government institutions in the region. Above all, to avoid discretionary measures that may be imposed by governments, simply because it is very difficult to encourage investment when there is no legal clarity or the government seems to be in constant chaos. Constant staff turnover impedes the long-term implementation of development plans, especially in cross-sectors such as ICT.
Another issue that seems to be forgotten by government officials is the devices that will be used by both users and companies, it does not appear in the vast majority of discussions. We must understand the cell phone as a generator of digital gaps 2.0 or 3.0 depending on the generation of the terminal. The complexity of smartphones seems not to have been contemplated by regional governments. Issues such as the generations of phones that the subscriber base owns should be an element to consider when launching e-government applications that aim to benefit the most needy. It’s the bitter joke of going to a restaurant with a Nokia 1110 and discovering that the menu on the table is in a QR code.
If the subject of devices is focused on the Internet of Things, the expert lectures seem to indicate that, if not for 5G, these devices could not be used to digitize processes and make them more efficient. If the subject is the user, the speakers forget the scarcity of microprocessors, the regional purchasing power or the real coverage for mobile service of the 28 commercial 5G networks that until March 2023 “existed” in the region.
None of the above is new. Memory makes us see many parallels between the arrival and departure of 5G with what happened twenty years ago with 3G. Device delays, unintended consequences of revenue spectrum allocation processes, undelivered promises and an initially degraded mobile virtual operator business model, later seen as a savior for network operators – similar to what you hear about private networks in some industry talks.
In the end, 5G will arrive and, as with previous generations, the population will end up using the technology. It will arrive asymmetrically, covering markets such as Chile, Puerto Rico or Brazil long before Ecuador, Nicaragua and Haiti.
The reason is very simple, the investment capacity. According to CAF data, investment in telecommunications in Latin America and the Caribbean has stagnated over the past five years, while in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries it has tripled. Schemes like the one used by Brazil in its last spectrum auction could serve to stimulate regional investment, but it remains to be seen whether it is viable in other markets in the region. For its part, Chile has established deployment requirements to encourage investment and, through initiatives such as Campus 5G, has attempted to grow the local 5G ecosystem.
Puerto Rico will continue as in almost all of its history, benefiting from the telecommunications programs that are generated in Washington DC due to the government’s neglect to promote the sector with a connectivity agenda defined and created locally. However, the injection of approximately US$ 2.5 billion for the modernization of broadband services at speeds of 100 Mbps UL / 20 Mbps DL will serve to promote opportunities for local entrepreneurship, improve the positioning of private companies and reward efforts from different entities that want to transform the island into a center of technological innovation in the Americas. Puerto Rico has almost all the elements to achieve it, except a clear will from the island government, enough detail to screw it up.
The pending question is whether 5G will arrive with all the promises that would make it a paradigmatic technology. 5G accompanied by inclusive public policies for the rural segment, 5G that invests in universities and schools to create applications, 5G that promotes transversality in decision-making on public development and economic policies. Is this the 5G that reaches our geographies or simply the one that gives us the highest Internet connection speed? Will there be advances in respect for institutions or will discretion give us a new decade in which those responsible for telecommunications will be changed at the whim of the executive?
What do you say, glass half full or half empty?
