Abstract

During the last two decades Latin American countries liberalized and, most of them, privatized their telecommunications industry. The reform tried to increase and maintain the public telephone network while introducing a real and sustainable competition. All in all, the analysis reveals that, although teledensity rates increased, this expansion has been unequal between the different geographical and economical regions. Since the start of this decade, with the advent of the Information Society (IS), states are, if possible, more aware of the fact that the access of the whole population to advanced telecommunication services is essential for the economic development of their countries and the reduction of poverty. Thus, twenty years after the beginning of this process, Latin American countries face a double challenge: they must continue to move forward in the expansion of basic networks and, simultaneously, they need to start generalizing the access to services that allow their soon inclusion into the Information Society. This paper analyzes past, present and future policies of four representative Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru. The final goal of the paper is offering some guidelines for policies oriented towards the development of the Information Society while, at the same time, maintaining some of the basic objectives of universal access and deployment of communications infrastructures.

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