Colombia. Aware of the importance of data and market knowledge for decision-making, the CRC has been preparing the ICT Industry Report since 2012, which allows readers to learn about the development and growth of the telecommunications and postal sector in Colombia, as well as the results of some of the policies adopted by the Commission.
According to the report, in 2017 the main indicators of telecommunications services for Colombia coincided with trends worldwide and show that the country continues to advance in terms of connectivity and use of telecommunications.
For its part, the Mobile Internet service stood out for its positive dynamics along with the growth of mobile telephony, which shows the preference of Colombians for mobile services over fixed ones. In 2017, while mobile telephony reached a penetration of 126.2%, fixed telephony continues with the same trend of recent years, standing at a penetration of 14%.
The growth of Mobile and Fixed Internet also ratifies the importance that this service has gained when communicating in the country. For 2017, mobile accesses exceeded 50% of the country's inhabitants (52.4%) for the first time and fixed Internet service closed the year with 6.3 million accesses.
This increased internet connectivity has gone hand in hand with increased usage. According to dane's latest Quality of Life Survey, 62.3% of the inhabitants in Colombia are Internet users and of them 69.4% use it every day of the week. Similarly, the Report indicates that this use is reflected in the sustained increase in mobile Internet traffic, which in the last six years grew at an average annual rate of 51.6%, which in 2017 translated into an average monthly consumption per connection greater than 1GB, a figure that had not been reached in previous years.
Although mobile Internet connections with 4G technology continued to grow in 2017, this growth was lower than that registered in previous years and still do not exceed 50% of the total of these connections (46.7%), which is why it is necessary to continue advancing actions to achieve a higher growth rate.
In the case of fixed Internet, a migration towards higher download (or download) and upload (or upload) speeds is observed. For the last year, the proportion of accesses with download speeds above 5 Mbps reached 75.2%, and with speeds equal to or greater than 10 Mbps 26.4%. These results are consistent with the increase in technologies such as Cable and Fiber Optics, which allow connections with higher speeds.
The relevance of the mobile Internet at the level of connections and traffic is corroborated in terms of revenue. In 2017, mobile Internet is consolidated as the largest generator of income within mobile and fixed communications services, with a total of 5.4 billion pesos and a share of 29%. Mobile telephony follows with a total of 4.2 billion and a share of 22%.
As for postal services, since 2015 the number of mail shipments has been growing at an average annual rate of 10.5%, going from 88.0 million in 2015 to 91.8 million shipments in 2016 and 107.2 million in 2017.
Although in 2017 the express courier service continues to represent the largest number of shipments (68.9%) and revenues (61.4%) of the total postal services, the service shows decreases in terms of shipments. Of these shipments, those of a massive type stand out, which as for the express courier service are the ones that generate the most traffic.
Finally, national money orders stood out for their sustained growth, going from 92.8 million transactions and 15.3 billion pesos drawn in 2016, to 16.5 billion pesos sent through 104.5 million transactions in 2017.
Check out the 2017 ICT Industry Report by clicking here.
