Already facing shortages of food and medicine, Venezuelans are at growing risk of being cut off from the rest of the world as the inability to get ahold of foreign currencies threatens access to phone calls and even websites abroad. Wireless operators Telefonica SA and Corp. Digitel CA have already suspended roaming services and international calls out of Venezuela after failing to extend payment terms with foreign phone companies. Prices have been rising for internet service, and even consumers who can pay often struggle to get working connections because of fraying infrastructure and outdated equipment. “There are operators that simply stop offering services because they can’t access dollars, and inflation is so rampant they just don’t know how to price it,” said Tina Lu, senior consultant at Counterpoint Technology Market Research in Buenos Aires. “The sad reality is that if the service is there, prices are now unaffordable for any Venezuelan with a median salary.”
Last week, President Nicolas Maduro blocked telecommunications operators from raising rates, which could further hurt their ability to pay for connections. Telecom companies had increased prices as much as 10-fold to help pay their own interconnection bills abroad, making phone, internet and wireless services beyond reach for many Venezuelans. The situation could get worse if internet carriers can’t afford to connect to the outside world, since many Venezuelans rely on web-based services like WhatsApp to communicate with family abroad. In many countries, including Venezuela, internet providers have to compensate their foreign counterparts or an intermediary for data transmitted into their networks. If currency woes force the carriers to stop paying, Venezuelans could be blocked from accessing internet data hosted outside the country, said Jose Otero, director of Latin America and the Caribbean for trade group 5G Americas. “If their lack of dollars continues, Venezuela could enter periods of many restrictions to access the internet, including an inability to access content hosted externally,” Otero said in an interview. “If there is no internet, there is no communication; this goes beyond being an issue for the sector because there is potential for incredible censorship.”
If the telecom companies can’t fix the problems they should sell them to the state, Maduro said on state television Monday night. “I say it like that to the telecommunications operators: if you say you can’t, sell them to us, because we’ll know how to manage them very well,” Maduro said. “It’s easy, and we’ll look for the way to do the transaction in a correct way and the fatherland will win. Nobody is going to set prices just like that. No.” Venezuelans have long used social media and foreign websites for news in absence of information from the government or state-controlled television outlets. There are about 16.7 million internet users in Venezuela, or about 63 percent of the population, according to the regulator’s latest data. “Venezuela is already isolated in physical terms, with more and more airlines canceling their services there,” said Pablo Bello, secretary general of the Inter-American Association of Telecommunications, based in Uruguay. “Now, operators cannot access foreign currencies and we see a new kind of isolation, one that could involve communication and connection, and one that worries us greatly.”
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Originally Posted by kilgram
