Page 128 - SAMENA Trends - March 2020

REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

competition and give users more affordable options by that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party ran
reducing the cost of ‘mid-range’ wireless packages. To for re-election in October 2019 with a pledge to lower
track progress of reductions, the government will release wireless tariffs by 25%, claiming this move would save
a quarterly price benchmarking report. Supporting the the average family of four almost CAD1,000 (USD752)
directive, Minister Bains announced the release of a year. One of the big three, Telus recently responded
the 2019 Price Comparison Study, which showed that by introducing its ‘True North Affordability’ pledge to
average prices from regional providers (smaller MNOs cut prices to below government targets. In another
including Freedom Mobile, Videotron, Sasktel, Eastlink measure to promote greater regional competition and
and Ice Wireless) were ‘up to 45%’ lower than the big lower prices, Minister Bains has also confirmed rules
three’s plans, but prices for mid-range plans had ‘not for the upcoming (Q4 2020) 3500MHz 5G spectrum
moved’. The study also claimed that Canadians have auction, reserving 50MHz for small and regional
been paying more overall compared to consumers in telecom companies within the 3450MHz-3650MHz
other G7 countries and Australia. TeleGeography notes range. (March 6, 2020) commsupdate.com

Chile is implementing a new tax law that obliges legislation specifies that companies will be required
overseas providers of OTT and e-commerce services to to pay VAT for “the delivery of digital entertainment
pay VAT. The 19% VAT rate will apply to all multinational content, such as videos, music, games and similar, via
companies that deliver services within Chile without download, streaming or other technology, including
Chile having a physical presence in the country. This includes texts, magazines, newspapers and books”. Additionally,
VAT will apply to overseas firms providing advertising
firms such as Airbnb, Amazon, HBO Go, Netflix and
Spotify. Payments will be made on a quarterly basis. services, data storage and software services. Transport
The tax change is part of Chile’s Tax Modernization services are a notable exception; while companies
bill which has been signed into law by the country’s such as Uber will not yet be required to pay VAT, this
President, Sebastian Pinera. The president noted that is because Chile’s parliament is currently debating
the bill is aimed at boosting tax revenues by US$2.2 a separate bill exclusively focused on the transport
billion, equating to around 0.6% of Chile’s GDP. The sector. (March 3, 2020) developingtelecoms.com

The Ministry of Information Technologies and successfully auctioned in December 2019 as part
Communications (Ministerio de Tecnologias de la of a multi-band spectrum auction
Informacion y las Comunicaciones, MinTIC) has • 3.3GHz-3.8GHz (‘3.5GHz’)
invited interested parties to register their willingness • Various millimeter wave (mmWave) bands, starting
Colombia to participate in the development of 5G pilot projects with 24.25GHz-27.5GHz.
before 17 March. In its announcement, the request (March 110, 2020) commsupdate.com
namechecks the health, education, entertainment,
industrial and tourism sectors; businesses active in The Communications Regulation Commission
these fields are expected to work alongside the country’s (Comision de Regulacion de Comunicaciones, CRC) has
mobile operators to test proto-5G applications. announced that it is reducing the window within which
While 5G activity has been quiet in Colombia to date, number portability (NP) requests must be processed
TeleGeography notes that the National Spectrum from three days to one day from 1 July 2020. The new
Agency (Agencia Nacional de Espectro, ANE) did stage watchdog – which was launched on 3 February this
a public 5G consultation in April 2019, after identifying year – reduced the portability window with Resolucion
the bands under consideration for 5G as follows: CRC 5929 de 2020. According to CRC data, a total of
• 614MHz-698MHz (‘600MHz’), which has been 22 million fixed and mobile numbers have been ported
authorized for mobile use following the country’s since the process was introduced in 2011, with 4.3
analogue switchover, which commenced on 31 million requests processed in 2019 alone.
December 2019 (March 10, 2020) commsupdate.com
• 698MHz-806MHz (‘700MHz’), which was

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