Yesterday President Sebastián Piñera signed a bill to create the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones, an agency expected to supervise Chile’s $30 million-telecommunications industry. Accompanied by the Minister of Transporation and Telecommunications Pedro Errázuriz, Piñera said the goal of the bill—which will now be sent to Congress—is to “ensure a deeper control that allows the protection of consumers’ rights and the rapid resolution of conflicts between users and service providers.”
The size of the industry and the lack of a proper regulatory infrastructure to support it motivated the bill. According to official data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas, Chile has more cellphones than people. In September 2010 the country showed 100 percent penetration with 17.6 million cellphones for a population of 17.1 million people. In addition, there are 3.5 million fixed lines and 2 million cable TV subscribers, accounting for 98 percent of households being provided the telecommunications service. “With this level of demand we must worry about the quality of the service,” said Minister Errázuriz.
The government expects the bill to be approved by the end of 2012 and the agency to be operational by 2013. Among the tasks that the new agency would have under its control are ensuring that service providers comply with the law, enforcing the regulation (with fines up to 1,000 per cent), issuing and terminating licenses, collecting and administering information about the sector, and regulating prices. Currently, the system is administered by the Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones (Subtel). In practice, once the Superintendencia starts working it will take charge of Subtel’s control and punitive attributions, while the Subsecretaría will keep promoting the industry’s development and growth.
The bill to create the regulatory agency is part of a comprehensive plan to reform the sector. During the last 20 months, other improvements have taken place such as unblocking cellphones, a neutral network, mobile number portability, and most recently the completion of the first phase of a plan to remove charges for domestic long-distance calls. So far, over six million customers have benefitted from this elimination.
