Interview with Daniel Medina

Vice-Minister ICT

Could you give us a small overview of the current ICT sector in Colombia ?

The telecommunication sector represents a 10% of the total FDI. The most important investors in these sectors are the Spanish, Mexicans and Americans. We also have national companies, especially in the big cities Bogotá, Medellín and Cali . I could say that the competitiveness is pretty strong, since the two biggest international groups and the biggest Colombian group; each represents 30% of the market. The legislation is open, which means that the investors can come to the country with a special title which gives them all the possibilities to be active. This title is pretty affordable. About 34 millions of Colombians are mobile phones subscribers , which is a very high rate, so whoever comes to Colombia will be able to use mobile phones. You will have signal almost everywhere, just like internet connection. The last two years we invested a lot of money in broad band internet, which is developing pretty well now. Two years ago we only had 10% of the population using Internet, but now we count with 30%.

What is the weak point of Colombia's ICT sector?

Regarding the penetration rate and the speed availableness, we can say that 3 years ago Colombia didn't have broadband yet. Today we have 1,5 million connections. But we can see that most of the users of broadband are in the big cities, and access to internet in rural areas is mostly funded by the government. It is very important that broadband also expand strongly to rural areas. Our goal is to have 80% broad band coverage in 2010. We can also say that 4 years ago, there were no computers policy at public schools.

Could you tell about the Plan of Development 2006-2010? Where are you now and have you accomplished your goals so far?

In Colombia , the government approves a Law of Development every four years. Every ministry has to set up a plan of development, which indicates what they are going to do, what budget they need, what are their goals, etcetera. Each ministry brings this to the congress to be approved. In the case of our ministry we have for example yearly goals like how many broadband connections we will have, how many computers will we purchase, how many public schools are we going to cover, basically everything is detailed, what are the costs. Based on this information the president keeps track on us if we accomplish our goals and in what situation we are in, by means of a special website. The first two years have been pretty good. With some goals we are even above our expectations or 2010. So the president asked to redefine the plan goals. We have had a lot of investment in this sector, which allowed us to accomplish our goals much faster.

What are the challenges for the ICT sector in Colombia ?

A big challenge we need to work on is the bilinguism. It is not only a challenge for this sector, but for the whole country. Colombia is still not bilingual, even though this is very important in the ICT sector. It is very important, since English is the language of business. We have to be on the same level as the island San Andres. Over there they speak very well Spanish and English, because of historical reasons and because of the importance of the tourism.

What is your personal message to our readers? 

Colombia is a country with a lot of passion. The people like what they do and we are very happy here. A lot of Colombians that left the country had come back. They have a very strong family union. People like to have fun and there are a lot of places to enjoy, like bars, restaurants, theatres. It is fun country and not as dangerous as everybody says. People here are always very nice with foreigners, we try to help them and accommodate them.