According to the latest connectivity report for the second half of 2025 released by Ookla, the Colombian telecommunications market has seen specific performance leaders in both mobile and fixed broadband sectors. The data, which tracks network performance across the country, identifies Claro (NYSE: AMX, BMV: AMX) and Movistar (NYSE: TEF, BMEX: TEF) as the primary benchmarks for speed and user experience during this period.

Fitch says that it took into consideration that the company will maintain its market share in both mobile and fixed services through investments and renewals in the network. This dynamic should support EBITDA generation and stable leverage. Telefónica Movistar is the second largest telecommunications operator in Colombia, offering mobile, fixed and business-to-business (B2B) services.

“Movistar Colombia is part of the life of Colombians, from their devices to their homes and companies, that makes us a privileged actor in the digital transformation of the country, to be able to influence the well-being of workers and our suppliers, allies, shareholders and users in general, we provide them with a value offer that we hope will meet and exceed their expectations. This rating reaffirms that we must continue to position ourselves as a key player in the market, continue to deploy fiber optics in Colombia, with which we hope to reach more than 5.5 million homes by the end of 2024.” said Fabián Hernández, CEO of Telefónica Movistar Colombia.

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.

MinTIC indicates that failing to provide a minimum of 4G coverage violates the right of access to information technology and basic communication for Colombians.

Avantel is in the process of being acquired by Telecom Partners Colombia, operating under the retail brand “WOM,” and the current fine comes after a fine earlier this year by MinTIC against Avantel for illegally sharing telecom spectrum, or frequency bands that carry mobile phone signals, with WOM.

Avantel is licensed to use the 2.4 GHz radio band, and WOM has a license for 700 MHz, but rival carriers Tigo and Claro filed complaints that Avantel was illegally using WOM spectrum, and MinTIC found in favor of the complainants.

Finance Colombia has reached out to WOM leadership, which has so far been unresponsive.

The Colombian government is offering the free “CoronApp Colombia” for download on Android devices, and toll free information lines (within Colombia): 01-800 095-5590 or for Bogotá: 330 5041. International callers may dial +57 1 330-5041. The app is not available for Apple devices.

Meanwhile, the ministry’s website isn’t up to the task. The site in the past two days has been either completely inaccessible, returns 404 “page not found” errors (even on the home page), partially loads, or demands a user name and password.

As the World Health Organization today officially declared the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, now is not an opportune time for the health ministry’s website to crash. Frustrated users are encouraged to call the numbers above for more information or to check with legitimate news sources for more information.

BELOW: The health ministry website only partially loads. ABOVE: Often the page doesn’t load at all.

In Colombia, Telefónica operates under the Movistar brand name.

The 1,408 towers in Ecuador were sold for €202 million Euros, or an average of €143,465 per tower. The 621 Colombian towers were sold for €87 million, or an average of €140,096 per tower according to Telefónica, which says the sale represents a multiple of 18x operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA). Telefónica still owns over 66,000 towers, with 20,000 in its Telxius operating subsidiary. 60% of Telefónica towers are now in the 4 countries where it intends to focus: Spain, Brazil, United Kingdom & Germany. Telefónica intends to make a strategic pivot away from its Spanish-speaking Latin American Markets as it announced earlier this year.

For Phoenix Tower, the transactions represent an expansion into Ecuador and Colombia, and strengthens its partnership with Telefonica. Once the transaction closes, Phoenix Tower will operate roughly 7,000 towers in Latin America.

“We are honored to expand our relationship with Telefonica in Ecuador and Colombia and look forward to working closely with them on their ongoing wireless build-out initiatives across the world. These transactions are exciting for PTI and will allows us to become the market leader in Ecuador, a USD based market with three healthy wireless operators with significant 4G build-out needs in the coming years, says Dagan Kasavana, Phoenix Tower’s CEO. “The transaction in Colombia solidifies PTI’s strong market position with over 1,800 owned towers.  Colombia has been a great market for PTI, and we see continued growth from all of the carriers in the coming years.”

Phoenix Tower International (“PTI”), the largest private tower company in the Americas, owns and operates over 8,000 towers, 986 km of fiber and over 80,000 other wireless infrastructure and related sites in fourteen countries located across the Americas and Europe.

Image by Finn Maxwell Cousineau from Pixabay

The objective of the Menlo Park, California-based company’s service mimics that of the other popular dating sites that have emerged over the past two decades, meaning that anyone familiar with the likes of OK Cupid, Tinder, and Match will be treading on familiar ground.

Specifically, people on the network can opt-in to Facebook Dating and be presented with “suggested matches” based upon common interests. These suggestions will not include “current Facebook friends” as part of the company’s desire to keep its platform dating — a sensitive and private matter for many people — fenced off from its core offering. Messages sent to suggested matches will also appear separately from the company’s traditional messaging service.

The company says it sees the service, which was announced earlier this year and already beta-tested internally, as a “dedicated experience” on Facebook that will make it “easier to meet and start conversations with people who share your interests.”

Part of the emphasis is also on cultivating long-term relationships, according to an exclusive report from Tech Crunch, something the company thinks it can do well because users inherently understand that any match is actually a real person with a full profile, not just a cute photo.

Ultimately, with so many single people out there across the globe, dating was just a natural progression for a social network that has continually expanded its scope into areas including sports broadcasting, e-commerce, news distribution partnerships, and digital payments.

“More than 200 million people have listed themselves as single in their relationship status on Facebook,” said Nathan Sharp, product manager for Facebook Dating. “We view this as an incredible opportunity to continue helping people build relationships in meaningful ways on Facebook.”

Colombia doesn’t have 200 million people, but it is the third-largest country in a region that predominately speaks Spanish, the most-used language on earth after Mandarin.

So with almost 50 million people living in Colombia, the country is capable of providing a lot of data quite quickly. Its large metro areas — Bogotá has more than eight million residents, while Medellín and Cali each have more than two million — also mean that a lot of mingling will be possible in a short time.

Facebook also says it chose Colombia due to the fact that its people are tech-savvy and highly social. Some 30 million people in the country visit Facebook each month, per company figures, and the company’s WhatsApp messaging app is similarly widespread.

Results of a Euromonitor International study released in 2017 found that roughly 80% of Latin American “digital consumers” reported visiting a social media site everyday. This was well above the 65% figure from the rest of the regions of the world studied by Euromonitor.

“Social media is more intertwined in the daily lives of Latin American consumers than digital consumers elsewhere,” says Michelle Evans of Euromonitor, writing last year about the results for Forbes. “In fact, this channel is emerging as a more important avenue for reaching consumers than even direct email marketing depending on the device.”

Given all the privacy concerns swirling around social media, and specifically Facebook, in recent years, such concerns have been widespread since the company announced its plans to foray into the dating world. Euromonitor found that worry about these issues is generally lower in some Latin American countries, including Colombia, but the global network still is working hard to assuage those fears.

It has continually highlighted that the activity of users of the service will never appear on their actual Facebook profile page or news feed, for example. Users also have full control over who can see their Facebook Dating profile and anyone who they have blocked will never be able to see their page.

“Enhanced privacy controls” are intended to make this even more customizable so that individual people can be be excluded from ever seeing the dating profile including the ability to “report or block someone if at any point you feel uncomfortable,” says Facebook.

(Phone images via Facebook)

Marcelo Martínez, who heads the team in Colombia, says the experience there was great and really helped them establish operations in the country.

But UruIT has now branched out into a new, independent office in Envigado, just to the south of Medellín. To find out more about the company’s time so far in Colombia and what lies ahead as it expands in the country, Finance Colombia Executive Editor Loren Moss sat down to talk with Martínez.

Marcelo Martínez of UruIT says the perception of Colombia has changed and that U.S. clients are now eager to work with companies located relatively close in Medellín compared to more distant locations in South America like Uruguay. (Credit: Loren Moss)

Loren Moss: Tell us about your last two years here in Medellin. What have you learned? What is different in your experience as a businessman and as a resident of Medellín and of Colombia? How do you perceive things through your foreign eyes?

Marcelo Martínez: The whole process of arriving to the country was fast, and we learned many things on the run. There was not much time to research all the different aspects regarding the business before, and we had to face big differences from Uruguay in terms of legal and administrative issues.

You must also learn about the culture, especially particular to Medellín, since Colombia is a very big country where culture and customs vary from region to region. We knew beforehand that Medellin attracted talent from other regions of Colombia, and we have noticed that it is true. It’s very well-known for its quality of life. Many people arrive searching for better opportunities or are willing to relocate here from other cities, such as Bogota, which is a more difficult city due to the large population, traffic, and security issues.

“The image of Colombia as a country — and as a knowledge producer — is changing. We’ve had some potential clients that like the fact that Colombia is closer to the United States.” – Marcelo Martínez of UruIT

Today the team includes people from different regions: Medellín, Bogotá, the coast, and almost every region of the country. There is also someone from Venezuela, which is undergoing a crisis, as you know, that represents an opportunity for us because very talented and capable people are searching for new horizons. We are glad that the Venezuelan is working with us. Uruguay is a smaller country in a farther-away location. Even though many foreigners arrive there, too, sometimes the subject of relocation is harder.

Another thing we feared at the beginning — but luckily has changed for good — is the image of Colombia in the United States. When we came here, many of our current clients seemed to be worried about our investment in Colombia, which frightened us a little. But we took the chance. And since last year, we have noticed a shift in the perception and business opportunities.

Clients come to us and tell us they want to work with Colombia, while Uruguay is perceived by them as a faraway land. This opened doors for us. The image of Colombia as a country — and as a knowledge producer — is changing. We’ve had some potential clients that like the fact that Colombia is closer to the United States. They even come and visit us. This also happened in Uruguay — but less frequently.

Loren Moss: I believe that, in Montevideo you have about 100 employees, primarily developing apps? I know you are an agile operation, but what is the difference in the operations and focus here in Colombia compared to your main base in Uruguay?

Marcelo Martínez: We have two basic business models. One is “nearshore” outsourcing or a “staffing premium,” which consists of expanding web development teams for companies in the United States. Many times, they have their own teams, so we help to extend them, and the team grows jointly.

The other model is more project based, and other roles participate, such as management and UX. We can start working with the clients at earlier stages when the product is not yet defined. Many times, those projects are shorter and require other type of skills and a different way of working. Those are the two models we have today.

Then there are the technological aspects. In our project-based work, we usually use whatever technology we consider best for the job. And in the staffing model, many times the client comes to us and lets us know the type of technology to be implemented.

In Uruguay, our strategy is divided: half dedicated to the project-based model and half dedicated to the full-product projects. In Colombia, the idea is to extend the staffing model. Colombia can grow in human talent because it’s a much bigger labor market than Uruguay. When we feel we have broader experience working here in Colombia, we will start implementing the other models here.

We are also focused on web development in Uruguay. The team there is working on that, and we do some hybrid development here in Colombia. A few months ago we had the chance to start working on projects with Python. We hadn’t done this regularly before. Now we have a team, and the idea is to continue growing and offering our clients web development capability with Python.

Loren Moss: We are talking here in your new base in Envigado. It’s very modern and new. But you started two years ago with your office in Ruta N. How has your experience been with Ruta N during these first two years, and what difference has it made for your establishing in Colombia? 

Marcelo Martínez: Ruta N was very important during the initial stage of establishing here in Medellín. The concept of Ruta N doesn’t exist in other Colombian cities — not even in Bogotá — and we saw a commitment of the government and local authorities to develop Medellín as a city of knowledge. You could tell there was a big investment behind it.

“When we visited other cities in Latin America and we evaluated the different circumstances, we didn’t notice such support coming from the government. Ruta N was a very strong reason we decided to move here.” – Marcelo Martínez

Ruta N offers foreign companies like ours many alternatives to get set up in Medellin and start working very quickly. Even though most countries of Latin America have too much bureaucracy, in Colombia, it’s very strong. For instance, things as simple as renting an apartment are very difficult for foreigners. I had to suffer this personally — and it’s not that easy for a company either.

Ruta N offers great support because you arrive, they help you out with everything, and they even provide the physical space. They don’t require much in the way of guarantees, and the price is quite reasonable. Having a very agile, flexible environment that allows for growth is fundamental for a company that is just starting.

When we visited other cities in Latin America and we evaluated the different circumstances, we didn’t notice such support coming from the government. Ruta N was a very strong reason we decided to move here.

READ MORE: UruIT Publishes E-Book on Machine Learning for Executives

Once we were here, the relationship was very good. They not only offer you the physical place, but they also provide guidance throughout the whole process. They connect you with different people and provide all the tools needed. They also help you with the positioning of your company through the local media and the export agencies of the country, including ACI Medellín, the Cooperation and Investment Agency of Medellín.

As time passed, we grew and needed more space. They always helped us. Even though we found the new office where we are today, they offered us a bunch of possible places for our new office here in the city. They help you become independent. Even today, though we are not part of Ruta N anymore, we continue being connected in a sort of an alumni network — just like in the universities — where you keep on being involved.

Loren Moss: If a company abroad wants to contact you — for example, for nearshore software development or mobile apps — how can they connect with you?

Marcelo Martínez: The easiest way to reach us and find out about us is our website: UruIT.com. We are also listed in American directories, and we travel a lot to attend events in the United States. During those trips we try to strengthen our networking. We have many clients and a large network in the United States that we have established during these last 10 years.

“It is difficult to see a domain where it couldn’t be applied nowadays,” said Waldemar López of UruIT in a recent interview with Cognitive Business News.

Photo: Waldemer Lopez of UruIT is the lead author of a new e-book on machine learning. (Credit: UruIT)

In addition to his day-to-day work building technology for the firm, López is the lead author of UruIT’s recently published e-book, “The Business Executive’s Guide to Smart Applications.”

The goal for the company, which has its headquarters in Montevideo and has offices in Miami, Los Angeles, and Medellín (Colombia), is to offer practical advice that is often missing in a space where resources tend to be created for either technical wizards or complete novices — but not both.

This e-book looks to find some middle ground, offering real-world use cases that a non-tech-expert CEO can use to make decisions as well as some application-building pointers that can benefit even the most savvy programmer.

To learn more about the approach and UruIT’s overall outlook on machine learning and artificial intelligence, we recently spoke with López.

“It’s important for us to show how to move from the algorithms to a deployed application.” – Waldemar López or UruIT

Jared Wade: What is the general theme of the book and who is it tailored toward?

Waldemar López: Our idea was to introduce the development of intelligent applications and the potential of these kind of applications and then relate this to the Internet of Things and Big Data. We wanted to give some examples, explore the basic concepts, and, mainly, introduce this all to people who work in the software industry but do not have previous knowledge in the subject.

With the e-book, we divided it into a few different sections. Some of them are more for business people and other sections are more technical. We talk about some tools, languages, or techniques that usually are used in this kind of project. In this first e-book, we want to summarize all of these topics in such a way that it could be easy to read for anyone.

Jared Wade: There seems to be a lot of stuff in the industry that is highly technical for the people who are creating algorithms and the underlying technology. And then there is a lot of super basic stuff. But that middle ground seems to be lacking. So I imagine this will be pretty well received for people who are actually trying to decide how to incorporate this in their company from a business perspective.

Waldemar López: Yes, exactly. There is a lot of work done by scientists and those kind of people. But, in this case, we want to focus on how to leverage these techniques, these tools, these algorithms. We are looking at how to begin applying them to the organization or to information systems. At UruIT, we are focused on web applications and mobile applications. So how can these new technologies be applied in those kind of systems? How can we move forward from traditional ways of developed systems?

For example, in this guide, you are going to see that we talk about a traditional system like a news webpage. How can we improve it in some smart way to personalize the content of the news for each kind of user? How can this be related to the recommendation systems on how to improve and personalize the user experience? These are the kind of questions we answer in the e-book.

Waldemar López of UruIT spends an afternoon working on the latest advances in machine learning — along with some mate tea. (Credit: UruIT)

Jared Wade: I noticed that the book includes some definitions upfront, which I think is very useful in this space. There are so many different companies, and the terminology is not universal across the board. When you guys are talking about machine learning and predictive analysis, what is your outlook on that? Do you have a real-world use case that helps illustrate this?

Waldemar López: Another important thing for us is to give the big picture and not only the algorithms that are in the background. So we talk about the pipeline and the workflow that we generally need to work with when we start, for instance, a machine learning project.

We included an interesting image in the book about all the different steps — starting from collecting the data — to help people understand how to begin a project. Or to help people understand what kind of models can be applied on that data — not only discussing the algorithms for this model, but also how we are going to deploy this model and how it’s maintained. There are lot of things — not only algorithms — that are important when we want to address this kind of project in a software company.

“This year, and probably next year, we are going to see some important improvement related to customer relationship management.” – Waldemar López or UruIT

We also recently worked on an article about a practical machine learning use case that is very related to the e-book. In it, we move through the pipeline and show, through Python examples, how to build an application from scratch. It is a very interesting application in this case that works with the football, or soccer, video game FIFA 18.

A guy collected all the player data through a web-scraping model written in Python. So we downloaded this data and, over it, we created different machine learning models, and we ended up by building a basic web application. The results are displayed in an interactive way where the user can play with the model, see what prediction it makes, and see the real values versus the prediction error.

We go through all the Python from scratch — collecting the data, how the data is studied, and how different models compare. And at the end we talk about building an application. This step is generally missed when we read different posts about machine learning that concentrate on the algorithms itself. It’s important for us to show how to move from the algorithms to a deployed application.

Jared Wade: Is it able to predict that Uruguay is going to win the World Cup?

Waldemar López: I guess that would be very easy — and we can hard code that prediction!

Jared Wade: When you talk to customers, what are you guys hearing? What are the things that they are the most interested in bringing to market now?

Waldemar López: I personally like a lot of the current research that is being done in text analytics. I am currently working on some projects to extract the semantics of the text. So, for example, this is not only useful when building a chatbot for support, but it also can be used to identify related customer cases that had a similar final solution for the issue.

Also, related to this, we are looking at how to extract information that is currently in a non-structured format, seeing how we can extract the relevant features of this information and give recommendations, for example. Recommendation systems are very-well-known systems with some classical techniques. But I think that, right now, when you see some deep learning techniques related to text analytics, we can extract relevant information from the descriptions of the product. And you can collect all the relevant information without having a guy that is trying to classify each product in different classes to train a model.

I see a very interesting new approach there of collecting all that information, all that semantic information — in a smart way. So I think that, this year, and probably next year, we are going to see some important improvement in that area related to customer relationship management.

Besides information management, we’ve seen other areas where machine learning could have an impactful influence for companies. So far, we’ve had several clients that are using algorithms to generate matches between users, vendors, consumers, employers, and employees, among others.

Additionally, in the telecommunications and banking sectors there are good opportunities to use machine learning to predict customer churn and many other issues. Or companies from other sectors can use the strategy of clustering to segment their market and make better marketing and business decisions. And the list goes on.

“There are good opportunities to use machine learning to predict customer churn. Or companies can use the strategy of clustering to segment their market and make better marketing and business decisions.” – Waldemar López of UruIT

Jared Wade: For 2018, other than things we’ve talked about, are there any other big emerging applications in this space? Or perhaps applications that are going to gain much more adoption as far as bringing together smart applications of machine learning?

Waldemar López: In the future, AI will generate a big impact in building a better, more equal society in different ways.

One example: The digital information collected during the last few years can be exploited now by smart agents, and, soon, “machine reading” will extract knowledge from these sources. With that, these agents will be able to support virtual assistants to help doctors by suggesting diagnostics or acting as teachers recommending content or answering questions. The latest cognitive computing developments, like image or speech recognition, will also improve the interaction with these agents.

AI combined with the Internet of Things will collect tons of data in smart cities, and this will contribute to create safer environments by using facial recognition to identify criminals or detecting hidden patterns from sensor data to predict important events. Self-driving cars are something that we see everyday in the news. And it is something that is happening today. At the enterprise level, AI will be used to automate different process, from recruiting to virtual assistants helping customers.

I think that we are going to see a ton of news in this year related with automation where machine learning is applied everywhere. It is difficult to see a domain where it couldn’t be applied nowadays.

This interview, which was originally published by Cognitive Business News, has been lightly edited for clarity and space.