Colombia assigns spectrum in low bands to 15 organizations

Colombia's ICT ministry authorized 15 of 22 bidders to use frequencies in the HF, VHF and UHF bands in the third stage of assigning permits to use radio spectrum in low bands.

The winning bidders include 13 companies in the transport, communications, agriculture and security sectors, as well as an embassy and an individual. They are based in the regions of Cundinamarca, Santander, Valle del Cauca, Córdoba and Antioquia.

The bands awarded include the HF (3MHz-30MHz), VHF (30MHz-300MHz) and UHF (300MHz-3,000MHz) spectrum.

The winning bidders are Admejoras Seguridad, Agroreyes, Auto Servicio Chía Limitada, Ayura, CA Radiocomunicaciones, Cooperativa Santandereana de Transportadores, Cooperativa Transportadores Cootraindividual, Embassy of Japan, Full-TICs, Julián Esteban Ríos Cárdenas, SQL Comunicaciones Digitales, Sociedad de Vigilancia Privada de Agentes en Uso del Buen Retiro (Sovip), Transmisión por Radios, Vertical de Avisión and Vipers.

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El Salvadoran telecommunications regulator Siget accepted a concession request submitted by Telefónica Móviles for 75 pairs of SHF radio spectrum frequencies for point-to-point links in fixed services.

It also granted CTE a concession to use five frequency pairs of the SHF radio spectrum for point-to-point links in fixed services.

Likewise, it agreed to DelSur's request to renew 25MHz of spectrum in the 900MHz band for fixed-mobile services, as well as Freund del Salvador's application to renew 25MHz in the 153MHz band for fixed-mobile services.

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The national assembly of Guyana has discussed the bill for electronic communications and transactions, which is intended to promote the regulation of electronic communications, transactions, payments and money transfers.

The bill is also intended to bring in regulation for electronic contracts and digital signatures.

Last week, the national assembly also approved the elimination of the cell phone tax. The abolition of the 20% duty will reduce the cost of importing devices and make them more affordable.

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Peru's congress has amended the regulation that creates the national registry of mobile terminal equipment for security, banning telecommunications companies from marketing or contracting mobile services on public roads in an itinerant manner, as well as selling public mobile services without biometric fingerprint verification of the seller or individual who acquires the services, among other changes.

More information can be seen here, in Spanish.

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The government of Panama and the IDB presented the Panama transparent management platform to enable accountability for public funds.

The platform takes the information directly from the management systems controlled by the economy and finance ministry.

Panama has therefore joined the regional initiative MapaInversiones to provide transparency on public spending, investment and procurement. Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Honduras already participate in the initiative.

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As part of a lawsuit over poor quality of telecommunications services, Chilean consumer protection agency Sernac estimated that VTR will have to pay 7.32bn pesos (US$8.8mn) in compensation to 533,000 customers for service failures between October 2019 and December 2020, local paper La Tercera reported.

VTR claimed that service outages were due to acts of force majeure and that the clients were already compensated under the telecommunications law.

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Peruvian regulator Osiptel confirmed fines of 5.5mn soles (US$1.5mn) against Telefónica, newspaper La República reported.

The fines are for failure to comply with the objective value of minimum download speed indicators for 3G and/or 4G technologies during the first quarter of 2021.

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Bolivian regulator ATT blocked 100 phones as part of an initiative to eliminate phone scams. During the last 10 days, the Bloquea la Estafa (block the scam) platform received 160 cases, of which 100 were verified and the corresponding devices were blocked.

Once a complaint is made, the platform allows the mobile phone operators Entel, Tigo and Viva to determine whether the complaints are real cases before proceeding to permanently cut off the IMEI number and SIM card within a maximum of 48 hours.

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Peru's national telecommunications program (Pronatel) approved the guidelines for the submission and handling of complaints, granting protection measures to complainants and punishing complaints made in bad faith, which includes provisions for processing complaints for alleged acts of corruption.

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Colombia's national spectrum agency ANE has extended the term for comments on draft resolutions on exposure limits to electromagnetic fields.

The consultation will now be available until July 27, 2023.

More information can be seen here, in Spanish.

Colombian regulator CRC has also extended the term to comment on the draft resolution modifying the rate update index. In response to the requests for extension, the regulator decided to extend the consultation until July 31, 2023. More information can be seen here.

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On July 18, Peruvian regulator Osiptel published for comment a bill outlining complementary regulations for the issuance of mandates for access to mobile networks for the provision of national roaming services. 

The document will be available for 15 days on the regulator's website.