Colombia: ip telephony and the Internet

5IP telephony in Colombia

The first and only case until early 2000 has a cellular phone company—Comcel—which apparently was not able to offer the service according to existing laws and regulations.

In local telephony, which is completely open and where there are no regulatory restrictions, there is no evidence at all of any initiative on the part of these operators.²¹ The largest cable television service provider in Bogotá—Tvcable—with more than 200’000 subscribers and a cable network installed in good part of the city, is awaiting numbering assignment by the CRT to start providing local telephony. Their forthcoming service packages will include television service, Internet service, and basic telephone service. Another company that could easily get into the local IP market is the recently AT&T acquired Firstcom, a former subsidiary of Telecom as Teleductos. The company has a good infrastructure in Bogotá and other cities throughout the country.

In long-distance, Orbitel recently began testing a voice communication service that provides a connection to the operator from a computer, using Ericsson software. ETB hopes to be able to offer long distance IP service this year, but has no plans for local service. Telecom appears to be planning to offer IP voice services this year at lower cost.

Value-added companies have very good prospects of getting into the local IP telephony business, since they know the business, they have the equipment, and have operating structure in place. There is, however, strong constraints imposed by the cost of long-distance service licences (US$ 150 million) and pressures of companies that have already paid for such a licence to keep the market closed to new entrants. Hence, it will be difficult to open up the long-distance market entirely unless some significant regulatory reforms are carried forward.

6Legal aspects of Internet voice service

Colombia’s new Constitution²³, which came into force in 1991, established that, while public services are inherent to the social aims of the State, private providers may still supply these services. This had not been explicitly stated before. Pursuant to the Constitution, Law 142, better known as the Law on Public Utilities was enacted in 1994. In addition to creating the CRT with a view to promoting competition in basic local telephone services, this law required the long-distance service be opened to competition, established that companies could freely enter the market for local telephone services, and set out the principles governing such services. This Law also created the Superintendencia de Servicios Públicos Domiciliarios [Office of the Superintendent of Public Utilities] and established it as the agency responsible for monitoring and overseeing telecommunication, water, electricity, sewerage and gas services. The enacting of this law, in 1994, coincided with the arrival of the Internet in Colombia.

It was not until 1997 that the CRT, after a lengthy reform process, managed to open the market by issuing Resolutions 86 and 87 of 1997. Although those Resolutions did not contain any specific provisions with respect to the Internet, they did set a price of US$ 150 million for licences for new long-distance operators. Taken together, this fact and the existing provisions have caused problems in the overall regulatory structure, particularly in regard to the desired atmosphere of liberalization for promoting the use of the Internet and its applications.

6.1Long-distance operators and value-added operators

Table 1: Defining Telecommunication Services

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