Govt Eyes 5,000 Rural Telecenters by Sep-2008

Bolivia's government aims to finance and build 5,000 public telecenters in rural areas by September 2008, local newspaper El Mundo reported the head of telecoms regulator Sittel, Cliford Paravicini as saying.

Currently there are 200 such centers. Sittel's public affairs chief Erick Butrón told BNamericas that another 5,000 new centers form part of a separate initiative under the private sector investment incentives program introduced by the government this year.

On June 28 the government published a decree detailing a series of incentives for the private sector to set up new centers.

These include exemption from spectrum usage fees for rural projects and help from the government in reaching interconnection agreements with other operators of rural networks at special rates.

"The expansion of telephony in rural areas has always been slow. However, this administration is making more significant progress," the newspaper reported Paravicini as saying.

According to Butrón, quite a few telecommunications operators have already expressed interest in the incentives program, especially for deploying mobile infrastructure in rural areas.

"Viva has started to deploy infrastructure for mobile coverage along

rural roads, while Entel is also interested in expanding mobile coverage to rural areas," Butrón said.

In related news, Paravicini said that mobile operators had made considerable progress in lowering congestion on their networks in recent months after the government complained that congestion levels were unacceptable.

Congestion on networks in big cities has fallen from 30% in August to around 8% currently, which is in line with international standards, Paravicini said.

The watchdog chief said mobile operators in the country were still working on deploying new base stations in Bolivia's three main cities - La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz - to tackle the congestion problem.

The operators concerned are Entel Móvil, of Telecom Italia, Nuevatel, which operates the Viva brand and is majority owned by US-based mobile holding company Trilogy International, and Telecel of Millicom International Cellular, which operates the Tigo brand.

Posted to the site on 27th November 2007