Since being liberalized in 1991, the Colombian telecommunications sector has added new services, expanded coverage, improved efficiency, and lowered costs. The sector has had the second largest (after energy) investment in infrastructure (54 percent) since 1997. However, the
economic downturn between 1999 and 2002 adversely affected telecommunications. During this period, Colombia's telecommunications industry lost US$2 billion despite a profit of US$1 billion in local service. In June 2003, the government
liquidated
Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a company is brought to an end. The assets and property of the business are redistributed. When a firm has been liquidated, it is sometimes referred to as wound-up or dissolved, although di ...
the state-owned and heavily indebted National Telecommunications Company (Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones—Telecom) and replaced it with Colombia Telecomunicaciones (Colombia Telecom). The measure enabled the industry to expand rapidly, and in 2004 it constituted 2.8 percent of
gross domestic product
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performanc ...
(GDP).
Telefónica
, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company with registered office and headquarters located in two different places, both in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the ...
of Spain acquired 50 percent plus one share of the company in 2006.
[Colombia country profile]
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
Federal Research Division
The Federal Research Division (FRD) is the research and analysis unit of the United States Library of Congress.
The Federal Research Division provides directed research and analysis on domestic and international subjects to agencies of the Unite ...
(February 2007). ''This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
.''
As a result of increasing competition, Colombia has a relatively modern telecommunications infrastructure that primarily serves larger towns and cities. Colombia's telecommunication system includes access to 8 different international
Submarine cable Submarine cable is any electrical cable that is laid on the seabed, although the term is often extended to encompass cables laid on the bottom of large freshwater bodies of water.
Examples include:
*Submarine communications cable
*Submarine power ...
systems,
Intelsat
Intelsat S.A. (formerly Intel-Sat, Intelsat) is a Luxembourgish-American multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons, Virginia, United States. Originally formed ...
, 11 domestic satellite
Earth station
A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fro ...
s, and a nationwide
microwave radio relay
Microwave transmission is the Data transmission, transmission of information by electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the microwave frequency range of 300 MHz to 300 GHz (1 m - 1 mm wavelength) of the electromagnetic spectrum ...
system.
[
]
Telephones
The country's teledensity (the density of telephone lines in a community) is relatively high for Latin America
Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...
(17 percent in 2006). However, there is a steep imbalance between rural and urban areas, with some regions below 10 percent and the big cities exceeding 30 percent. Bogotá
Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...
, Medellín
Medellín ( ; or ), officially the Special District of Science, Technology and Innovation of Medellín (), is the List of cities in Colombia, second-largest city in Colombia after Bogotá, and the capital of the department of Antioquia Departme ...
, and Cali
Santiago de Cali (), or Cali, is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, and the most populous city in southwest Colombia, with 2,280,522 residents estimate by National Administrative Department of Statistics, DANE in 2023. The city span ...
account for about 50 percent of telephone lines in use. By the end of 2005, the number of telephone main lines in use totaled 7,851,649. Colombia Telecom accounted for only about 31 percent of these lines; 27 other operators accounted for the rest.[
Colombia's mobile market is one of the fastest-growing businesses in the country. In 1993, the first mobile phone call was made.][
]
Radio and television
In late 2004, Radio Televisión Nacional de Colombia (RTVC) replaced the liquidated Inravisión
The Instituto Nacional de Radio y Televisión (Inravisión) was Colombia's national public broadcasting organization between 1964 and 2004. It was created by Decree 3267 of 20 December 1963, which declared that from 1 April 1964 the country's pu ...
(Instituto Nacional de Radio y Televisión) as the government-run radio and television broadcasting service, which oversees three national television stations and five radio companies (which operate about a dozen principal networks). Colombia has about 60 television stations, including seven low-power stations. In 2000 the population had about 11.9 million television receivers in use. Of the approximately 515 radio stations, 454 are AM; 34, FM; and 27, shortwave
Shortwave radio is radio transmission using radio frequencies in the shortwave bands (SW). There is no official definition of the band range, but it always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (app ...
.[
]
Undersea Cables
As of 2016, Colombia has access to the following international Submarine cable Submarine cable is any electrical cable that is laid on the seabed, although the term is often extended to encompass cables laid on the bottom of large freshwater bodies of water.
Examples include:
*Submarine communications cable
*Submarine power ...
systems: SAC/LAN, Maya-1
Maya-1 was a Filipino nanosatellite. It was developed under the Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite program (PHL-Microsat) and was jointly implemented by the University of the Philippines and the Department of Science and ...
, AMX-1
The America Movil Submarine Cable System-1 (AMX-1) is a fiber optic submarine communications cable of 17,800 kilometers that extends between the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Brazil.
...
, Pan Am
Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and more commonly known as Pan Am, was an airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States for ...
, SAm-1, ARCOS-1
The Americas Region Caribbean Ring System (ARCOS-1) is a fiber optic submarine communications cable of 8,400 kilometers that extends between the United States, the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Curaç ...
, CFX-1, and PCCS. These cables land at 4 locations in the Caribbean: Barranquilla
Barranquilla () is the capital district of the Atlántico department in Colombia. It is located near the Caribbean Sea and is the largest city and third port in the Caribbean region of Colombia, Caribbean coast region; as of 2018, it had a popul ...
, Cartagena, Riohacha
Riohacha (; Wayuu: ) is a city in the Riohacha Municipality in the northern Caribbean Region of Colombia by the mouth of the Ranchería River and the Caribbean Sea. It is the capital city of the La Guajira Department. It has a sandy beach wa ...
, and Tolu. One cable lands on the Pacific Ocean coast at Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca
Buenaventura is a coastal seaport city located in the Pacific Region of the department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia (South America). Buenaventura (Spanish for "good fortune") is the main port of Colombia in the Pacific Ocean.
As of the 2018 cens ...
.
Internet
Colombia is still far behind Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
, Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
, and Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
in terms of online usage. It had an estimated total of 900,000 Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
subscribers by the end of 2005, a figure that equated to 4,739,000 Internet users, or 11.5 percent of the 2005 population (10.9 per 100 inhabitants). By late 2009 39% of households had internet access Colombia had 581,877 Internet host
A network host is a computer or other device connected to a computer network. A host may work as a server offering information resources, services, and applications to users or other hosts on the network. Hosts are assigned at least one network a ...
s in 2006. Although as many as 70 percent of Colombians accessed the Internet over their ordinary telephone lines, dial-up access is losing ground to broadband
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...
. In 2005 Colombia had 345,000 broadband subscriber lines, or one per 100 inhabitants. In 2006 the number of personal computer
A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
s per 1,000 people increased to an estimated 87 per 1,000 inhabitants, a rate still below that in other large Latin American economies.[ The internet country code is .co.
]
References
External links
Colombian Ministry of Communications
Comunicate.com.co
Coldecon, Internet Provider
{{DEFAULTSORT:Communications In Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...