This event has been held in Colombia for nearly 30 years, and it brings together telecommunications companies, government organizations, TV broadcasters and any number of other players, including more Internet Service Providers, infrastructure firms and others competing for space in the “spectrum” wars that affect all parts of Latin America and the world. At this year’s event, there were 2600 attendees, 160 media representatives and a wide variety of vendors/participants representing more than 26 countries, including France, the honorary “partner” host in this event.
As such, this particular forum is a good one to take measure of what’s happening in the Andean Region. Dr. Alvaro Uribe Vélez, the current president of Colombia, provided some of the highlights in Colombia, in his closing ceremony speech, October 30, 2009:
- World Bank research shows Colombia has moved to 37th in the world in competitivity, from a former position of 160th in the world.
Colombia has leaped past other big Latin American economies in this ranking, now surpassing Brazil, Mexico and Chile.
Colombia graduates today thousands of students in M.A. and Ph.D. programs, “on shore” as opposed to “off shore”
Colombia generates many other thousands of students earning technical or trade program degrees, through various governmental and educational organizations.
Colombia has a master plan for taking its Internet hubs from one, centralized connection (from Bogota) to a hub and spoke system that serves all major cities and their surrounding cities and towns. A project to lay fiber optic cable under the sea to connect its island provinces of San Andres and Providencia, is starting now.
New spectrums are being opened up for television, IPTV, government/security usage and private industry, based on both the country’s ongoing commitment to public safety and security (in the fights against terrorism, guerrilla violence and narco-trafficers), as well as its commitment to improving the country’s productivity and future prosperity.
While this list is not all-inclusive of the remarks made by Dr. Uribe, or other speakers at Andicom’s closing ceremony, it is a sample of the vision and the future of this Andean country, which today has a population of approximately 46 million, and a widely-diversified economy, one of the leaders in Latin America. At the same time, Dr. Uribe insisted that the world should continue to bring direct financial investment to the country, as this flow of capital, ideas and collaboration by countries, companies and individuals is a vital part of Colombia’s continued growth and drive to expand prosperity to all parts of its population. A key element of his remarks was the drive to provide social impact to all economic strata within the country through telecommunications, Internet and other “tele-services”. These services today facilitate programs and productivity in education, medicine, agriculture and many other parts of the economy.
Finally, one overriding note from Dr. Uribe’s comments was that of security and public safety. Clearly, this is underscored by the greatly-improved security situation throughout Colombia, which has worked diligently to reduce the spaces and places where the FARC and other guerrilla/narco-terrorist organizations can harm citizens and their means of earning a living.
In light of my current employer, SonicWALL’s network security expertise, and the confluence of voice/data/video and other information flowing over IP networks, such as the Internet, private PBX networks, VoIP connections, etc., it is of particular interest to note how much the current prosperity and productivity that Colombia is enjoying is a direct result of the improved security mechanisms and commitments that the Colombian government is successfully employing throughout the nation.
It makes me think that if ever companies and customers were interested in securing their own networks and VoIP transactions, and such, they would be wise to make sure that security and protective measures for all elements of their network infrastructure were in place and kept constantly up to date. Clearly, the threats that have consumed Colombian society for forty years, when reduced and isolated, as has happened during Uribe’s administration, are parallels to the damage and risk that happen to computer networks when left under- or unprotected. Security on the network is a key to productivity, just as security in a nation like Colombia is vital to productivity and prosperity and, yes, competitivity.
In sum, Andicom 2009, in Colombia last week (Oct.28-30, 2009) was an experience that underscores the vibrancy of both the Andean region and Colombia in particular, as well as the ongoing technology trends that drive productivity and prosperity in this part of the world. Let’s hope that such positive trends continue for all concerned.
© Daniel A. Cabrera, TopExec.org, All rights reserved, 2009.
To read this posting in Spanish or Portuguese, please look on these blogs:
http://sonicwallblog.blogspot.com/ (Spanish)
http://sonicwallbrasil.blogspot.com/ (Portuguese)
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