Roundup: Costa Rican innovation, Colombian regulation, Dominican Rep digital TV

Community innovation

Costa Rica's science, innovation, technology and telecoms ministry, rural development institute Inder and the innovation promotion agency sealed an alliance to strengthen and equip community innovation laboratories and smart community centers.

Estimated investment of 1.1 billion colones (US$2 million) will make it possible to equip 12 community laboratories and strengthen 44 community centers.

These "will be spaces where rural communities can access cutting-edge tools and knowledge, which will allow them to develop solutions to their own challenges and improve their quality of life," minister Paula Bogantes said in a press release.

Computer distribution

Colombia's ICT ministry opened a public consultation on plans to include adults in precarious situations in a program that currently distributes computers to public institutions, minors in urban, rural and difficult-to-access areas, and those that are part of the Youth in Peace program.

Comments may be submitted through July 6. Details are available here.

Extension

ICT regulator CRC extended the public consultation period for a regulatory simplification process until July 22.

Launched in May, the process collects observations which will allow identifying obsolete regulations that can be eliminated and others that can be simplified, reducing compliance costs for regulated agents and promoting an efficient regulatory environment.

Ex ante regulation

CRC also removed the mobile outgoing voice market from the list of markets susceptible to ex ante regulation.

The list now includes mobile services, fixed-mobile call termination at the national level, the fixed-fixed wholesale call termination market in municipalities and the wholesale market for mobile-fixed call termination in municipalities, among others,

Digital TV

Dominican regulator Indotel approved the specifications for the second phase of an IDB-backed project to enable low-income households to access digital TV.

The phase includes the acquisition of 400,000 digital TV signal converters and the deadline for submitting offers is July 30. It covers northern and southern provinces.

In the first phase, Indotel delivered 389,858 converter boxes in the provinces of Hato Mayor, El Seibo and La Altagracia, among others. 

The tender documents are available here, in Spanish.