“The country’s digital connectivity is a mission in which the State and the National Government must work together to overcome the social gap,” said President Gustavo Petro, during his speech at the opening of the International Congress of TICAndicomwhich takes place in Cartagena and runs until September 2.
(This was the intervention of President Petro in the opening of Andicom).
The president of the Colombians began his presentation with a historical tour of Colombia, including part of the beginnings of the economy, passing through the possession of land, industrialization, up to the present, where connectivity is consolidated as the fundamental axis. for the development of a nation.
“In Colombia, connectivity is a mission that remains to be done. Achieving, then, connectivity, digital literacy, digitizing the State, digitizing the economy, we become objectives of a mission that we have to undertake and that makes the budget, and we will see how we reform it in Congress, the priorities vary ” he declared.
(The International ICT Congress, Andicom, started).
Among the challenges mentioned by Petro, in which connectivity and technology will play a fundamental role, there is the climate crisis that threatens humanity. Likewise, the president declared himself optimistic that they can be overcome, “through a decarbonized economy.”
In addition, he added that the Government’s effort in these four years can serve precisely “to lay the foundations for that new economy, which will be tomorrow, decarbonized, alive and human and networked, thanks to these new technologies if we know them, control , regulate and dominate, and not the other way around”.
.Another point addressed by President Petro was that all efforts to extend connectivity in the country could be lost if people do not know how to use technology for production and for the generation of wealth.
He stressed that the greatest deployment of fiber optics should be a coordinated effort between the public and private sectors.
(There is already an ICT minister: Sandra Urrutia was appointed to the portfolio).
“We propose to take a leap in connectivity. In connectivity we are bad. The test of previous governments has been to put part of the (electromagnetic) spectrum up for auction and request compensation for the expansion of connectivity in areas that are not profitable for the private companies that undertake it. Colombia is, in connectivity, below the Latin American average, and has been insufficient. And letting the private company assume that expansion would be an experiment that would be unfortunate, said the president.
What are the challenges of the portfolio?
Within the framework of Andicom, the different unions that make up the technological and telecommunications ecosystem have made clear some of the challenges that the new minister of the ICT portfolio will have.
Samuel Hoyos, president of Asomóvil, affirmed that connectivity, as a efficient spectrum policycounting on an infrastructure deployment and promoting investments in the sector, would be one of the challenges facing the minister.
Alberto Samuel Yohai, president of the Colombian Chamber of Informatics and Telecommunications (Ccit), told Portafolio that the main challenge of the new ICT minister (who has not yet taken office) focuses “on generating an optimal environment for massive investment in the sector ”.
johana lorduy
