Spotlight: Venezuela's telecoms sector

Although Venezuela's telecoms sector has deteriorated sharply, it retains some dynamism within the limitations of the country's political-economic context.

A survey by industry chamber Fedecámaras found that the sector registered the second fastest growth in Q2 with 6% year-on-year, behind manufacturing with 13.2%.

The dollarization of the economy and the elimination of price controls spurred development of fiber optics and the preparation of mobile networks for 5G.

However, the business climate has weakened even more after the recent national elections in which President Nicolás Maduro claimed another mandate, although they were widely seen as fraudulent. These problems add to others that hinder investments, such as a lack of bank financing, high legal uncertainty and power outages.

BNamericas takes a look at the main issues.

5G

Jorge Márquez, the head of regulator Conatel, told the Fitelven sector event last week that the 5G auction will be launched very soon, although he did not provide details on the bands to be offered.

Meanwhile, state telco Movilnet claimed that 5G is available in parts of metropolitan Caracas.

“We can say that we are the first operator in the country that has 5G technology. We cover a large part of the city of Caracas and La Guaira,” Movilnet president Aníbal Briceño said in a statement.

Mobile operator Digitel will deploy 5G to provide wireless broadband service using 4G infrastructure. The company's 4G network consists of over 3,000 sites and the plan is to reach 5,000 in the next two years, company president Luis Bernardo Pérez said in a press release.

Movistar, meanwhile, has implemented over 1,600 actions in the last 20 months to strengthen its 4G network and enable VoLTE and 5G services. The actions included the modernization of more than 500 sites, updating cells, densification works, improved coverage and expansion of 4G capacity. It also added 32 areas to its coverage footprint.

Updated data on the mobile business is not available. Conatel's website was not accessible at the time of writing.

FIBER

Fiber optics are available in 99% of municipalities, vice president of science, technology and health, Gabriela Jiménez Ramírez, told state broadcaster Venezolana de Televisión. She also claimed that internet penetration has reached 65%.

Conatel has not published recent fiber optics statistics.

At the Fitelven event, state-owned companies Cantv and Movilnet, and operators PatriaCell, Thundernet, Inter, VNET, NetUno, Digitel and Fibex announced an agreement to optimize internet traffic through the creation of a traffic exchange point, but details were not disclosed.

Some of these companies are providing fiber services, although recent data on projects or investments is not available.

Inter said in early September that it passed 1.9 million homes with fiber and aims to reach 2mn in the short term. Cantv promised earlier this year that it will bring fiber optics to 60% of the population.

Movistar, meanwhile, announced the development of fiber optics but only for the business sector.

Conatel claimed early this year that Venezuela surpassed its 2023 goal of deploying 25,000km of last-mile fiber optics networks by 316% and of implementing 5,000km of transport fiber by 234%.

This year, Conatel plans to deploy another 5,000km, but updates have not been provided.

In 2022, Venezuela had 2.58mn broadband subscribers.

Last week, the government announced the signing of a letter of intent with Iranian datacenter company MDC, Cantv and Corpostel for producing fiber optics in Guaira state.

SUBMARINE CABLE

Cuban-Venezuelan company TGC plans to expand its Alba-1 submarine cable system.

“We currently have 250GB and we are planning to increase this capacity by 800GB in the first quarter of 2025. This would give us 1TB on the two fibers that are currently connected,” TGC president Jean Carlo Méndez told state media.

Next year, the company plans to advance the illumination of two fiber strands of the cable.