Argentina. Ente Nacional de Comunicaciones, Enacom, approved the FM radio standardization plan, a set of measures for the regularization of hundreds of stations throughout the country. Through simplified administrative processes on the platform of remote procedures, the conditions will be generated for the PPP to be formalized and for small and medium-sized broadcasters from different locations to have the possibility of accessing their final licenses.
The regularization plan is composed of several measures that will be extended throughout the country. First, the regularization plan for broadcasters broadcasting with Precarious and Provisional Permits (PPP) was approved. This means that, for the first time since 1989, the regularization of precarious broadcasting permits will be addressed in an orderly, transparent, simplified and public manner.
This measure will also be extended to non-commercial broadcasters in the main cities of the country, which only in 2006 were legitimized as providers of audiovisual media services, but with titles that are still provisional today.
In this sense, Silvana Giudici stressed that "this fact represents a great advance in Argentine broadcasting for commercial and non-commercial broadcasters that hope to normalize their situation and receive their licenses," adding that "to match them in rights and obligations with the rest of the licensees throughout the country is to settle a debt of more than 25 years with this sector and give it predictability to make the necessary investments to compete in a context of demand and permanent technological advancement".
In the same vein, the Board of Directors approved a new simplified public tender regulation for the award of FM radio licenses in those places where radio spectrum is available. In this first stage, a contest will be opened in the provinces of Jujuy, Catamarca, Corrientes and Tierra del Fuego. The registration application can be made in an agile way and with simplified processes through the electronic platform of Distance Procedures (TAD).
The standardization plan will be extended in a first stage to all localities with spectrum availability in order to guarantee the right to information, federalism and plurality of voices. In this way, the use of the radio spectrum is promoted in those areas where there are resources available to incorporate and formalize new licensees and the ordering of the same in conflict zones through the regularization of PPPs.
Finally, the board of directors advanced in the regulations of interconnection and fixed number portability within a set of measures that are being taken to improve the quality of telephone services and customer service.
The president Silvana Giudici, and the directors Heber Martínez, Alejandro Pereyra, Agustín Garzón, Miguel Ángel Giubergia, Guillermo Jenefes and Claudio Ambrosini participated in the ENACOM board meeting.
