During the last years Colombia has been making transit to become a relevant player in the dynamic digital world. The country developed a fiber optic network that connects much of its territory, has driven the massification of internet among citizens and businesses, and created a network of entrepreneurs like no other in Latin America, to name a few examples.
Much of the impulse that Information Technologies and Communications have received in Colombia is supported precisely by the increasing connectivity. In six years, Colombia sixfold the number of Internet connections broadband, which now exceed 13.2 million. This development in connectivity has led to more Colombian companies to develop products and services to compete in the international market.
According to a recent paper by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of good practices of governance to which Colombia hopes to join, our country was the highest growth in broadband penetration fixed between December 2014 and December 2015, a period in which Colombia recorded an increase of 5.4 percent, higher compared to the 34 member countries of the organ. Colombia is becoming an important player for the digital world.
To continue in this line, Colombia is ready to adjust its definition of broadband. In Colombia connections with speeds of at least 1,024 Kbps (downstream) and 512 Kbps upstream (upstream) are considered broadband. In August this year, by order of the National Development Plan 2014-2018, the Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) started the discussion about what the new definition of broadband in Colombia.
To do this, the organization published a document containing the proposal for broadband in the country with a vision to 2020. This document is the basis for the new definition, which begin to take effect in late 2016.
According to Juan Manuel Wilches, expert commissioner of the CRC, the proposed entity is that in the short term 10 megabits per second (Mbps) is the minimum speed for a connection is considered broadband in urban areas of the country while in rural areas would remain at 1,024 Kbps (1Mbps).These rates will be increased again in 2020, when the minimum would rise to 25 Mbps in urban areas and 10 Mbps in rural areas.
Wilches explains that this proposal is based on the provision of internet services in different regions of the country and the use that the citizens make of these services. "You might think that we could put the US aim (25 Mbps), but definitely, as a developing country, we must understand very well what are the conditions of the regions and cities front the productive use of the Internet" added the official.
