Expanding Internet Connectivity

This document is presented by the Al Sur consortium and was prepared by one of its members, Karisma Foundation (Colombia), in response to the request made by the ITU for civil society to report problems and challenges for the expansion of connectivity in rural and remote areas, and the role of community networks in this process of reducing the urban-rural digital gap.

Although we present a regional framework, the document focuses on Colombia's situation as a country that offers an overview of the region's average. The document especially presents the barriers derived from the public policy vision that refers to the ICT sector and reflects the different governments' position in Latin America, especially its market vision to close the digital connectivity gap through commercial licenses of the electromagnetic spectrum. Although the complexity and diversity of digital gaps are appointed, the analysis is based on the connectivity diagnosis that shows how in this digital gap the distance between urban and rural is evident, and the differences between the major cities compared to scattered rural areas are very worrying. Finally, throughout the document, the aim is to highlight the role, still incipient, of community networks, which has excellent potential for reducing the digital connectivity gap.