The information society in Latin America

Effective regulation and investment

The fifth Summit of the Regulators and Operators from the Latin America region — Foro Latinoamericano de Entes de Reguladores de las Telecomunicaciones (REGULATEL) — focused on effective regulation and private investment. Addressing the Summit in Punta Cana (Dominican Republic), ITU Secretary-General, Yoshio Utsumi, analysed the current state of telecommunications development in the Americas. He remarked that since the publication of ITU’s 2000 edition of Americas Telecommunication Indicators, the industry had not only grown substantially, but had also changed in many ways:

• At the start of 2000, there were almost twice as many fixed-line users in the region as mobile users. Now, halfway through 2002, mobile users already outnumber fixed-line users.

• In certain countries of the region, like Paraguay or Venezuela, there are now more than twice as many mobile users than fixed-line ones. In several countries, the number of fixed lines actually declined in 2002. Mobile is becoming the dominant network for voice communications.

• Internet users have continued to grow at a remarkable rate and around one in every twenty citizens of the region are now Internet users. Broadband is beginning to penetrate the region; notably through ADSL, cable modems and wireless LANs.

• By the time of the World Summit on the Information Society, the first phase of which will be held in Geneva from 10 to12 December 2003, there will be more than 140 million mobile users, more than 100 million fixed-line users and almost 50 million Internet users in the Latin America Caribbean region.”

The Instituto Dominicano de las Telecomunicaciones (INDOTEL) hosted REGULATEL’s Summit on 11 and 12 July 2002. “By hosting events such as this, INDOTEL is proving itself to be an excellent ambassador, not only for telecommunications in the Dominican Republic but in the region as a whole,” Mr Utsumi said. He also congratulated the Asociación Hispano-americana de Centros de Investigación y Empresas de Telecomunicaciones (ACHIET) on the occasion of its 20th birthday, stating that ACHIET’s history was “a celebration of the principle and practice of regional cooperation”.

ITU played an important role in the early days of REGULATEL, in particular through the organization of one of the first meetings of regulators from the region, held in Lima in 1997. “Since then, REGULATEL has gone from strength to strength,” Mr Utsumi noted, adding that this remarkable achievement and the themes of the fifth Summit — effective regulation and private investment — were major factors in the Latin American success story.

“Those different ingredients for successful reform are exemplified in the Dominican Republic. It was one of the first countries of the region to adopt a competitive market structure, and has benefited from foreign investment. It was also one of the pioneers in establishing an independent regulatory agency,” Mr Utsumi said. The benefits of this pro-reform programme are evident. For instance, the number of mobile phone users has been growing by 50 per cent and the number of users passed the one million mark in 2001.

The World Summit on the Information Society

But the information society is about more than just markets and networks. It is about the way we use information and communication technologies (ICT) to enrich our lives at home, at school and at work. Mr Utsumi observed that his “generation grew up in an era where the goal of telecommunication policy-makers was to bring a telephone into every village, and later into every home. But for today’s generation, the goal is to make mobile phones available to every person who wants one.”

In the emerging information society, each person may have hundreds of miniaturized computing devices and software agents that can communicate electronically. They will report on all aspects of our personal and business life, and will provide us with constant updates on information items we have selected. These devices may be so small that, for instance they could be swallowed to provide health status reports from inside the body. Or they could be contained in the airbag of a car to contact the emergency services automatically in the event of an accident.

“This vision of the information society, which is based on pervasive ICTs, can only be realized if we break through today’s barriers of access and affordability. We can use ICTs to break free of the tyranny of distance. We can use them to overcome the barriers of scale and scope, which prevent our firms and our economies from competing effectively.”

While telecommunications infrastructure lies at the heart of the information society, these profound changes in human society require a multi-sectoral approach to address the full range of issues. “That is why we are organizing the World Summit on the Information Society in cooperation with our sister organizations in the United Nations, under the high patronage of Kofi A. Annan, with ITU taking the lead managerial role,” Mr Utsumi told participants. Regional meetings are an important part of the preparatory process. The Dominican Republic is expected to hold the Americas regional preparatory meeting in the first quarter of 2003.