Colombia. The CRC presented the ninth version of the Industry Report, which brings news, both in form and substance, including the boxes of highlights of each subsector to provide the reader with a concise summary of the most important events in the industry in 2019, and includes a macroeconomic analysis and the ICT sector year 2020, as a result of the economic and social emergency caused by COVID-19.
In addition, it includes figures on the behavior of the use of infrastructure through National Automatic Roaming, mobile number portability, evolution and analysis of the sound broadcasting sector and highlighted sections of the most important facts of the sector and a section of conclusions.
About the ICT sector
According to the report, at the national level, the growth path of the ICT sector in recent years is highlighted, especially in 2018, the year in which the sector grew above the consolidated of the Colombian economy, although in 2019 growth was slowed compared to the country's growth figures (3.3% growth of the national GDP vs 0.8% of the sector in real terms).
Operating income from the ICT sector (fixed and mobile Internet, Fixed and mobile telephony, subscription television) grew by 2.2% in 2019, mainly due to the mobile Internet segment, whose revenues grew by 20.1%.
Mobile Services
In 2019, a total of 66.28 million mobile voice lines were counted, which means a penetration in the country of 134%. Of these lines, 21.2% corresponds to the postpaid modality and the remaining 78.8% to the prepaid modality.
4G networks are the most used to access mobile internet with 21.1 million accesses in 2019, more than 2G and 3G technologies combined. This corresponds to 67% of total mobile internet accesses.
The average income per gigabyte of Internet consumption has decreased in recent years in the country, from 2016 to 2019, going from corresponding to 0.55% of the national GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power parity) to 0.15%, that is, a decrease of two thirds.
The deployment of base stations for 4G reached 15,395 in 2019, being the only technology that increased the number of stations with respect to 2018, supporting the technological migration of the country
Data consumption per mobile terminal has increased in Colombia by 292.5% between 2016 and 2019, going from 293 MB per month per user to 1,150 MB.
Fixed services
Fixed internet access in Colombia reached 6.95 million at the end of 2019, representing a penetration of 39.7% at the household level. 18.3% of the accesses were classified as broadband (download speed greater than or equal to 25Mbps and upload greater than or equal to 5Mbps), while 6.8% were ultra broadband (download speed greater than or equal to 50Mbps and upload of 20Mbps).
The number of fixed telephone lines in Colombia was 7.01 million at the end of 2019, of which 5.7 million (82%) were residential. Thus, the residential penetration rate of the service was 36%, remaining practically unchanged during the last four years.
The number of subscription television connections in Colombia reached 5.9 million in 2019, representing an annual growth of 0.6%. With this, the penetration rate of the service in terms of households stood at 37%. The income received from the provision of this service registered a slight increase of 0.6% in nominal terms, going from $3.17 billion in 2018 to $3.19 billion in 2019, although this led to a contraction of 3.6%, in real terms, of the average income per connection.
At the end of 2019, there were 1,588 registered radio stations in Colombia, which received $630 billion in revenue. Of these, 41.8% had a commercial purpose in their activity, while 39.4% was of community vocation and the remaining 18.8% was of public interest.
For the full report, click here.
