Mexico. In an environment where dialogue, reflection and the generation of proposals were highlighted, the OTI 2016 Meeting held in Mexico City concluded, which on this occasion brought together 31 of the most important telecommunications and content companies that make up the Organization.
Under the slogan of "More content, better connectivity", Emilio Azcárraga Jean, President of the OTI reiterated the commitment of the Organization to the representatives of the 22 countries that make it up: "We are proud to be a vehicle for companies from both sectors of the Ibero-American region and the United States to coordinate efforts on regulatory issues, of public and social policies in common, to contribute to the economic and cultural development of the region and enrich the lives of more than 500 million people by connecting them more and better, facilitating their access to more content, cultures and experiences".
Also, amid the enthusiasm of its participating members, Azcárraga Jean announced the main results that the OTI has reaped in a period of only six months after its successful relaunch last April, in the City of Miami:
The OTI has become a regional platform for the promotion and defense of freedoms of expression and press in Ibero-America, as shown by the regional effort that was made with the Special Mission in Ecuador, one of the five Latin American nations where it is considered that there is no freedom of expression according to several international organizations, among which Freedom House stands out. During this meeting, Dr. Laura Chinchilla, Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression OTI, and former president of Costa Rica, was in charge of presenting a Report of the Mission of the Rapporteurship on Freedom of Expression in Ecuador.
And in an unprecedented event in the history of democracy in the United States, the OTI, was invited through the OAS, the Organization of American States, to be part of a mission where the work of the Secretary General of the OTI, Javier Tejado Dondé, was highlighted to evaluate the conditions of competition of the candidates, the behavior of the media and the tone in the campaign within the electoral process of the United States of America.
In addition to these achievements, the importance of promoting and reviewing the issues that concern and affect the industry, such as Over The Top (OTT) services and the figure of the Must Carry/Must Offer, was highlighted in order to promote advances in the regulation of the countries of the region and in favor of the industry and consumers.
On the subject of OTT ecosystems, a study was presented that documents the regulatory experiences on the audiovisual content market in Latin America, and which seeks to outline the definition and regulatory implications existing in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, as well as the regulatory treatment of new technological platforms such as Over The Top (OTT) services within the competitive ecosystem of that market. In addition, guest experts roslyn Layton, Academic at the Center for Communication, Media and Information Technology at Aalborg University, and Christopher Yoo, an academic at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition, presented regulatory trends in the European Union, the United States and Latin America.
For his part, Federico González Luna Bueno, Executive Director of the OTI in his presentation stressed that: "according to the objective of encouraging conditions of competition in the markets of open television and restricted television, in addition to guaranteeing access to content of relevance to the national population, different countries use the provisions known as Must Carry / Must Offer", and pointed out that the OTI has a very complete study where the various specifications that these standards have in some countries of Europe and America are described and contrasted.
In another of the expected panels, "Impact of the U.S. Elections in Ibero-America", Jorge G. Castañeda, Professor at New York University in the Department of Arts and Sciences and former Foreign Minister of Mexico; Arturo Valenzuela, Academic and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University; and Laura Chinchilla, head of the OAS Electoral Mission for the November 8 election in the United States, provided important reflections to understand the new geopolitical landscape in the region after the triumph of Republican candidate Donald Trump as president-elect of the American nation.
Finally, the event concluded with the visit of the members of the OTI to the official residence of Los Pinos, where the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto received them.
