Fernando Latterza de Oliveira
Department of Regulation for Latam, Telefónica
On 25 May a workshop titled “Change from the licensing system to the authorization system” took place in Brasilia, within the Anatel cultural space, jointly organized by the ABDTIC (Brazilian Association of Law and Information Technologies) and the cet.la (Latin American Centre for Telecommunications Studies). The meeting sought to reflect on the change from a licensing model to an authorization model for fixed telephony services.
The participants in the event, Bruno Soria, Associate Director of NERA Consulting, and Alexander Ribó, Telefónica’s Director of Regulation for Latin America, shared international stories in which this line of public policy has been followed in order to move towards models more suited to the current situation affecting the Digital Ecosystem in the region.
The case of Spain was presented by Bruno Soria, Associate Director of NERA Consulting, who provided a brief review of licences throughout the world and then went into more depth in the case of Spain, regarded as having completed a successful migration from a licence to an authorization. Soria highlighted the aims of the continuity of the service and the maintenance of the universalization goals, as well as the incentive for demand for developments and respective investments in broadband. The NERA Consulting representative put forward the Avanza Plan as an example.
Alexander Riobó provided the examples of cases of mobile service licences in Colombia. Telefónica’s Director of Regulation for Latin America explained the regulatory changes enabling the migration from licences to a general authorization scheme. Riobó also went into what the transition regime consists of and the discussions which still persist with regard to the reversal of assets.
To close the seminar, Leonardo Euler de Morais, a Board Member of ANATEL, the Brazilian regulator, emphasized the importance of this change of model for the development of the massification of the broadband in Brazil and stressed the need to approve the bill which will enable the change from licences to authorizations (PLC 79) in Brazil. According to the above speaker, the longer the approval of the project takes in the Senate, the greater the devaluation of the reversible assets to be converted into investments will be.
The event promoted by the ABDTIC, the cet.la and ANATEL led to a consensus among the participants with regard to the need to make the necessary changes in Brazil’s licensing system, in order to stimulate a new investment cycle within the country.
