Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission (Comision Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, Conatel) has unveiled its ‘Eighth Project of the National Transport Network’ (‘Octavo Proyecto de la Red Nacional de Transporte’), which it says will connect more than 15 million rural citizens to new fibre-optic networks.
According to the regulator’s director general, Jorge Elieser Marquez Monsalve, the network includes 5,500km of fibre and incorporate nodes covering 203 rural municipalities. Connectivity has focused on the south and west of the country, as well as the Andes, with CANTV taking responsibility for the technical and geographic aspects of the project. The deployment activity was bankrolled by the country’s Universal Service Fund, Conatel noted.