Mobile broadband will be a major contributor to increasing Internet connectivity in Colombia, Carlos Andrés Rebellón, executive director of the Colombian telecommunications regulator, CRC, told RCR Wireless News. A recent CRC report places Colombia third in the region for its information technology and communications (ICT) sector.
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“With the future roll out of LTE, mobile broadband will surpass fixed broadband, becoming the most important Internet access ,” Rebellón said. He believes that this might occur in 2014, with the launch of LTE services. Colombia’s government is still in process of evaluating the rules for the spectrum auction, which is expected to happen by December, as ICT Minister Diego Molano Vega said during the ICT event Andicom this week (check out all stories).
In the report, CRC monitored ICT indicators from several institutions, such as the World Economic Forum (WEF). The report noted that Colombia had the fourth largest growth in mobile telephony in the region and from the first quarter of 2010, had the highest growth in the number of Internet accesses. According to the CRC report, Colombia grew 46% compared to countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, which grew 43%, 31% and 39% in the same period, respectively.
The increasing demand for higher speed Internet connections shows in the comparing data from the fourth quarter of 2011 versus the first quarter of 2010. Access via cable, with average speeds of 2,641 Kbps, had the highest growth in subscriber numbers with 65.5% compared to xDSL, which has an average download speed of 1,071 kbps and grew by 32%.
