“This will be the largest academic agenda we’ve had in our history,” Díaz said, noting that ANDICOM 2026 is spread across two venues for the first time, the Las Américas complex and the Hotel Faranda Collection. CINTEL, the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (Center for Research and Development in Information and Communications Technologies), runs technology-adoption projects with Colombian government bodies including the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology alongside private-sector clients.

This year’s theme, “Unleashing the Power of AI,” organizes the program around four pillars: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital trust, connectivity and digital infrastructure, and public policy and regulation. Manuel Martínez Niño, CINTEL’s executive director, told El Universal that the congress has become the most important gathering of its kind not only in Colombia but in Latin America, bringing together authorities, government, business, academia, multilateral banks and legislators to work on the country’s digital inclusion.

The congress opened September 1 with the ANDICOM Knowledge Hub at the Faranda Collection, running two parallel sessions Díaz called central to the week: one on the transition to post-quantum cryptography, ahead of what Díaz said industry estimates place around 2029 as the point when quantum computers could break current encryption standards, and another on AI governance and the oversight of autonomous agents.

The European Union is this year’s guest of honor, sending a diplomatic and commercial delegation for sessions on the bloc’s approach to AI regulation, cybersecurity and quantum computing. European companies account for 22% of foreign direct investment in Colombia’s technology sector and have created more than 120,000 jobs in the country, according to figures CINTEL presented for the congress and reported by Cartagena al Día.

Wednesday’s opening ceremony was expected to include Colombia’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Alexandra Falla Zerrate, along with European Union representatives outlining the new government’s technology road map. The day’s keynote speakers included Pilar Manchón, senior director of research strategy at Google AI (NASDAQ: GOOGL), who has described artificial intelligence as “the most profound and transformative technology humanity has ever developed,” and Marc Reguera, worldwide general manager for Microsoft Fabric (NASDAQ: MSFT) customer engagement, on the next generation of intelligent business applications. A separate afternoon panel brought together Julissa Cruz, director of sustainable digital infrastructure at CAF – Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean; Alexia González Fanfalone, head of the connectivity services and infrastructures unit at the OECD; Carlos Lugo Silva of the International Telecommunication Union; and a public-policy representative from Amazon Web Services to compare regulatory experiences across countries. In parallel at the Faranda Collection, a forum on financing digital infrastructure and connectivity brought in the European Investment Bank, the World Bank and Colombia’s Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional.

Thursday’s agenda centered on a regulatory panel gathering officials from across the region: Gonzalo Balseiro, president of Uruguay’s Unidad Reguladora de Servicios de Comunicaciones (Communications Services Regulatory Unit); Sergio Sotomayor Rodríguez, director of Colombia’s National Spectrum Agency; Felipe Augusto Díaz Suaza, executive director of the Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (Communications Regulation Commission); and Lucas Gallitto, head of Latin America and the Caribbean for the GSMA. The day also featured a panel of telecommunications-company executives from WOM, Claro, Tigo and LinkMax discussing the sector’s challenges and opportunities.

Friday’s keynote speakers included Eric Martorell Bouvier of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE), on digital sovereignty and data infrastructure. Díaz said the closing keynote was expected to include President Abelardo de la Espriella, who was set to address technology and AI as drivers of the country’s economic and social development.

Díaz pointed to a Wednesday afternoon session on AI in the creative industries, covering the technology’s use in music and film production, as one he was personally looking forward to. The congress’s commercial exhibition includes more than 215 companies, and its mobile app lets attendees flag sessions and schedule meetings, a feature Díaz said has become central to the networking Loren Moss described as one of ANDICOM’s main draws.

The CRC’s analysis, developed after public consultations with operators, platforms, and academic institutions, determined that the relationship between these three parties is mutually beneficial. Digital platforms drive demand for data, telecom operators provide the necessary connectivity, and users gain access to a wider variety of services and content. The study found no evidence linking the increase in data traffic to unexpected or unplanned investments by operators, considering traffic growth a predictable part of network planning.

The study detailed several key findings regarding digital consumption in Colombia:

• Traffic Growth: The annual growth rate of data traffic in Colombia fell from 103% in 2021 to 10.1% in 2024. This trend contradicts the argument that OTT platforms should be obligated to pay operators for network usage.
• Local Traffic: The majority of fixed and mobile internet traffic now circulates through local peering or cache systems, which may be related to the increased number of data centers deployed by digital ecosystem players.
• Smartphone Use: Smartphone ownership increased from 84% in 2021 to 88% in 2024. Of the surveyed users, 74% use online applications for calls (up from 66% in 2021) and 78% for messaging (up from 69% in 2021). WhatsApp (WhatsApp), owned by Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META), was identified as the most used messaging platform.
• Content Platforms: Approximately 32% of surveyed individuals over 15 years old access audiovisual content platforms. The most used were Netflix (Netflix: NFLX) and Disney+ (The Walt Disney Company: DIS). In the audio sector, 92% of respondents did not have a paid subscription. Among those with a subscription, Spotify (Spotify Technology S.A.: SPOT) was the most used at 47%, followed by YouTube Premium (Alphabet Inc.: GOOGL, GOOG) at 23%.

The report also highlighted that while the use of digital services is increasing, digital infrastructure remains concentrated in major cities, which may limit quality and access in peripheral regions.

Based on its findings, the CRC has outlined four strategic lines of action, some in collaboration with the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies (MinTIC):

• Regulatory Project: A new regulatory project with a normative impact analysis will be launched to further analyze the relationship between OTT platforms, operators, and users.
• Reporting Adjustments: The CRC plans to adjust information reporting requirements to monitor user traffic by network type and platforms accessed.
• New Study: A new study will be conducted to identify and disseminate tools that help users avoid unsolicited content.
• Child Protection: The CRC will work with MinTIC to promote the safe use of technology and protect children and adolescents, in compliance with Law 2489 of 2025.

Video streaming. Photo credit: Frank_Rietsch from Pixabay.

The report, presented in an interactive format, allows for data disaggregation by multiple variables. For the first time, it includes quality indicators for mail service and reincorporates those for express messaging, in addition to a general overview of market share and the number of operators.

In 2024, the postal sector’s total revenue reached $2.7 billion, a 10.8% increase from 2023, marking a historical record over the last five years. During this period, 360 million shipments were processed. Express messaging accounted for 80% of this traffic, with postal money orders at 13.5% and mail service at 6.5%.

Express messaging was the leading service in the postal sector for 2024, generating $2.38 billion in revenue, which represented 87.5% of the market. This figure reflects a 19.1% increase compared to 2023. The service handled 289 million shipments, a 3.7% increase from the previous year. Of these, 56.2% were domestic, 35.5% were local, and 8.3% were international.

The average revenue per shipment was $8,391 at constant prices, representing a real growth of 7.8% from 2023. In terms of company market share, Interrapidísimo led with 15.3% of shipment volume, followed by Servientrega with 12.7%.

The official postal operator, 4-72, handled 23 million shipments in 2024, generating $84.214 million in revenue. While this was a nominal increase, after adjusting for inflation, it represented a real decrease of 3.9%. The universal postal service contributed 17% of the mail service’s revenue and 16% of its total shipment volume.

Correspondence constituted 96% of these shipments, accounting for 87% of the revenue. The average revenue per mail shipment was $3,665, a real decrease of 5.4% from 2023.

In 2024, postal money order services processed 49 million transactions. Of these, 99.7% were domestic, while international transactions were split 64% inbound and 36% outbound. These transactions generated $257 billion in revenue, which marked a 31.3% decrease from 2023 at constant prices.

Regarding market share, Supergiros led with 40.3% of transactions, followed by Efecty (32.2%) and SU RED (26.5%). The average revenue per money order was $5,375. After accounting for inflation, this figure showed a real decline of 9%, primarily attributed to a reduction in the average revenue of both domestic (-8.8%) and international (-6.5%) money orders.

In 2024, only 65.3% of express messaging shipments were delivered within the agreed-upon timeframe, while the universal postal service provided by 4-72 had an on-time delivery rate of 78.2%.

Additionally, 99.9% of express messaging shipments were delivered in good condition to their recipients or returned to the sender. Similarly, 100% of non-universal mail service shipments were delivered in good condition.

According to the regulator’s Data Flash report, Colombia’s fixed services market, which includes internet, telephony, and television, reached 10.8 million total connections, with 88.1% belonging to residential customers.

The preference for bundled services, or “paquetes,” continued to grow. As of December 2024, triple-play bundles (internet, phone, and TV) accounted for 40.9% of all connections, an increase of 0.9 percentage points compared to the end of 2023. Double-play packages represented another 17.2% of the market, with the combination of telephony and internet being the most common, totaling over 1.15 million connections. Stand-alone, single-service contracts accounted for the remaining 41.9% of accesses, growing 1.85% over the previous year.

Total revenue from fixed services during the fourth quarter of 2024 reached $3.12 trillion COP, a 1.4% increase compared to the same period in 2023. The average monthly revenue per user stood at $96,142 COP. This growth was driven almost entirely by fixed internet services, which saw revenues climb by 9.14%. In contrast, revenue from the subscription television segment fell by 8.9%.

Diving deeper into the data, the number of fixed internet connections rose by 2.27% to a total of 9.09 million. This equates to a national household penetration rate of 44.4 connections for every 100 homes. The report also noted a significant increase in connection speeds, with the national average reaching 382.3 Mbps for downloads and 235.1 Mbps for uploads.

The television market moved in the opposite direction. Total pay-TV connections (including subscription and community-based services) reached 6.2 million. Of those, 6.1 million were for subscription television, a segment that saw its subscriber base shrink by 1.34% compared to the fourth quarter of 2023.

Claudia Ximena Bustamante, commissioner and executive director of the CRC, stated that the report is a result of the commission’s ongoing monitoring of ICT markets and serves as an informational tool for public and private entities. She affirmed that the CRC’s objective is to continue promoting conditions that ensure quality, affordable, and widespread service coverage for citizens, noting the importance of fixed internet as a growth engine for the sector.

Internet access. Photo credit: OleksandrPidvalnyi from Pixabay.

This report consolidates key information to evaluate the quality of telecommunications (internet, telephony, and subscription television) and postal services, to know the level of user satisfaction as well as the problems and the main causes of non-conformity, as a key tool for the supervision and regulation of companies in the sector.

According to the analysis, during the second half of 2024, 2.01 million complaints were registered regarding telecommunications services, which represents a decrease of 26.7% compared to the same period in 2023 and an annual reduction of 32.9% compared to the total for 2023.

77.2% of the complaints were filed through traditional channels such as telephone lines and physical offices, while 22.8% were managed through digital means such as websites, social networks, and messaging applications.

The number of complaints per 100 accesses, for telecommunications services, was:

• Fixed internet: 3.16
• Mobile telephony: 0.3
• Subscription TV: 0.57
• Fixed telephony: 0.75
• Mobile internet: 0.3, the latter being the only one with an increase in complaints: +52% compared to the second half of 2023.

The main causes of disagreement identified were the unavailability of the service, errors in billing, and unjustified charges or discounts, common to all the services evaluated.

The report also analyzes the behavior of decisions in the different instances of attention, identifying that 78% of the PQRS were resolved in favor of users in the first instance, while 67% were resolved in a second instance, by the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce.

In terms of complaints in the postal service, during 2024, 103 million postal shipments were reported, of which 645,000 PQRS were generated, which is equivalent to 0.63% of the total shipments. The service with the highest number of complaints was express courier (95.5%), followed by mail (2.5%) and money orders (2%). The main typologies were requests for information (55.02%) and non-compliance with delivery times (22.38%).

“From the CRC, we will continue to monitor the behavior of complaints in the communications sector, to identify opportunities for improvement, strengthen the protection of users’ rights, and promote better quality in the provision of services,” said Claudia Ximena Bustamante, commissioner and executive director of the CRC.

Photo credit: albertoadan from Pixabay.

According to the analysis carried out by the commission, as part of the work to monitor the behavior of regulated services, since the Mobile Number Portability measure was implemented in the country, which allows users to change mobile operator as many times as they wish with their line number, between August 2011 and December 31, 2024, approximately 57 million porting operations have been carried out.

During 2024, users requested a total of 7.08 million mobile operator changes, 15.5% less than in 2023, of which 1.77 million corresponded to porting operations carried out during the fourth quarter of this year (0.3% more than what was recorded in the third quarter).

In the last quarter of 2024, for portability, some operators gained more users than they lost, while others had a balance against. This was the behavior:

Operators with the most users gained:

• Claro: +93.528
• Movistar: +67.738

Operators that lost more users than they received:

• Tigo: -90.175
• WOM: -64.746

In the fourth quarter of 2024, 261,700 port requests were rejected, a decrease of 6.3% compared to the previous quarter. Claro had the highest number of rejected operations, with 87,200, followed by Tigo with 83,600, WOM with 43,700, and Movistar with 36,300.
The main reason postings were rejected is that the applicant was not the contract subscriber nor authorized to carry out the porting process (95.1%).

“The figures presented reflect that number portability continues to be a fundamental tool to promote competition in the Colombian mobile market, by empowering users to freely choose the operator that best suits their needs. The decrease in rejections and the stability in the volume of portings show advances in the efficiency of the process, which will be consolidated with the measures adopted in Resolution 7684 of 2025, which updates the causes of rejection and eliminates barriers for prepaid users, by allowing the change of operator even when the line is registered in the name of a distributor. Transferring to the receiving operator the responsibility of updating the ownership. In addition, it reinforces security by requiring data verification before activating new lines. From the CRC, we will continue working to make this process increasingly agile, transparent, and secure,” said Claudia Ximena Bustamante, Commissioner and Executive Director of the CRC.

Photo credit: Tigo Official Facebook page.

The publication aims to address information asymmetries by providing insights into the quality of services delivered by internet service providers (ISPs) across Colombia. Additionally, it benchmarks Colombia’s internet performance against 26 other countries. The report introduces innovative assessment tools, including the Quality of Experience Index (ICE) and the Game Score, which specifically evaluate online gaming performance.

Key Findings

Significant Increase in Internet Speeds

Between the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024, Colombia experienced a notable improvement in fixed internet speeds:

• Download Speeds: Increased by 55.1%, reaching 147.1 Mbps by June 2024.
• Upload Speeds: Rose by 45.7%, reaching 49.5 Mbps.

Among providers, Movistar led with a download speed of 250.5 Mbps and an upload speed of 221.1 Mbps, followed by ETB, which also reported the lowest national latency at 6.7 milliseconds. Both companies demonstrated strong download-upload symmetry, largely attributable to the deployment of fiber-optic connections directly to end-users.

City Performance

Performance varied significantly across Colombian cities:

• Armenia recorded the fastest download speed at 206.79 Mbps.
• Bogotá achieved the highest upload speed at 93.95 Mbps and the best latency at 10.65 milliseconds.
• Cities such as Bogotá, Barranquilla, Cartagena, and Ibagué showed significant year-over-year improvements, surpassing their June 2023 metrics.

Quality of Experience Index (ICE)

The CRC’s ICE provides a comprehensive evaluation of fixed internet service quality across major Colombian cities. As of June 2024, Bogotá ranked first with an ICE score of 78.84, up from 55.21 in June 2023, reflecting a 23.63-point improvement. Other cities showing notable gains included:

Online Gaming Performance

The Game Score, developed by Ookla, evaluates the quality of online gaming experiences by analyzing metrics such as latency and connection stability. Movistar excelled in this category, leading in six top ten cities and placing second in the remaining towns.

Official Remarks

According to Lina María Duque Del Vecchio, Commissioner and Executive Director of the CRC, “The results presented highlight significant improvements in speed, latency, and symmetry, benefiting users and operators alike. These analyses reflect the CRC’s ongoing efforts to monitor communication services and encourage continuous improvement in service delivery across Colombia.”

The full Data Flash report provides detailed data disaggregated by ISP, department, city, and local districts, including Bogotá’s surrounding municipalities, Medellín’s communes, and the Valle de Aburrá region.

Photo credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The published quality measurements for the period between January 2018 and December 2021 include seventeen cities in Colombia: Armenia, Barranquilla, Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Cali, Cartagena, Ibagué, Manizales, Medellín, Montería, Pasto, Pereira, Popayán, Santa Marta, Sincelejo, Tunja, and Villavicencio. Data was obtained from Ookla’s Speedtest application.

Compared to 11 countries in South America, Colombia ranks fourth in download speed and third in upload speed in fixed Internet service, but in mobile internet, Colombia ranks a very poor 10th in download speed and 8th in upload speed.

“With these measurements, the Commission continues to provide information that facilitates decision-making by users when choosing the operators that best suit their needs, and at the same time, seeks to encourage operators to improve the provision of their services in the different regions of the country,” said the Executive Director of the CRC, Paola Bonilla Castaño.

Fixed Internet

• Bucaramanga, Bogotá and Cali recorded the highest average download or download speeds in December 2021, 101.2 Mbps, 95.8 Mbps and 91.2 Mbps respectively.
• The city of Bucaramanga recorded the highest average upload speed with 63.5 Mbps.
• At the carrier level, Movistar recorded the highest average download speed in December 2021 with 129.7 Mbps, followed by ETB with 101.8 Mbps, Claro with 82.4 Mbps and Tigo with 71.9 Mbps.

 Tigo had the lowest latency of mobile providers at 30ms

Mobile Internet

• The download speed at the Colombia level for the year 2021 was 17.6 Mbps, with a decrease of 3.3% compared to 2020.
• Montería, Cartagena and Barranquilla presented the highest average download speeds for the year 2021, with 22.6 Mbps, 22.2 Mbps and 21.2 Mbps respectively.
• At the operator level, for the year 2021, Tigo recorded the highest average download speed, with 24.8 Mbps, followed by WOM with 16.9 Mbps, Claro with 16.1 Mbps, Avantel with 14.6 Mbps, Movistar with 14.3 Mbps and ETB with 14 Mbps.
• For the year 2021, the average loading or uploading speed for Colombia was 9.9 Mbps, which does not represent a variation in relation to the year 2020, and a decrease of 3.9% compared to the year of 2019.

Cali showed the fastest median mobile download speed among Colombia’s most populous cities during Q2 2022 at 13.55 Mbps.

• Pasto, Montería and Barranquilla recorded the highest averages for upload speed in 2021, with 12 Mbps, 11.9 Mbps and 11.7 respectively.
• As for operators, Tigo recorded the highest average upload speed in 2021 with 13.3 Mbps, followed by Claro with 9.2 Mbps, Movistar with 8.8 Mbps, Avantel with 8.6 Mbps, ETB with 8 Mbps and WOM with 7.6 Mbps.
• WOM had the highest Consistencyin Colombia during Q2 2022, with 78.4% of results showing at least a 5 Mbps minimum download speed and 1 Mbps minimum upload speed.

Devices from Apple had the fastest median download speed in Colombia during Q2 2022 at 16.62 Mbps.