Q: What is the history of the comisión de regulación de comunicaciones (crc)?
A: It’s quite a young regulator, set up in 1994 – before that the regulator was just based in an office in the ministry of communications. At that time, it was mainly concerned with fixed-line telephony and was starting to allocate mobile licences. Now we have much wider scope. In particular, various laws and decrees passed since 1999 have aimed to make us a converged regulator – our name has changed from ‘telecoms’ to ‘communications’ and we have gained responsibility for TV and post, and are tasked with promoting competition and preventing the abuse of market dominance. Before, there were four authorities for various services, and it was difficult for users to find out who was responsible for a particular issue. So what we do now is fixed telephony, TV, internet and broadband, everything related to mobiles, and also postal services, often included in communications regulation in other countries. It isn’t easy to produce regulation for different services in a converged regime in a short time but we are getting there.
Intermedia talks to Pablo Márquez, executive director of Colombia’s communications regulator
Q What is the history of the comisión
- Intermedia Issue:
- Vol 42, Issue 1
- Issue Date:
- April 2014
- Region:
- Americas
