BROADBAND IS EXPANDING RAPIDLY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLICDr. Jose Rafael Vargas say the Dominican Republic is undergoing an impressive expansion on the national broadband network, especially in the rural areas of the country. This growth is the result of the Telecommunication Development Program, which is leaded by the Dominican industry regulator, INDOTEL (Dominican Institute for Telecommunications), working in conjunction with the private sector.
An immediate outcome of this expansion is that Dominican providers of cable TV services are now able to offer Internet connectivity to far-away towns and villages of the country. Likewise, wireless telephony is now a reality on remote locations where the inhabitants used to need to climb a tree with their cell phone in order to make a call. Now, they do not only have telephony at their homes, but they are also able to connect to Internet as well. The result of this program is remarkable: over the last two years, the Internet connectivity of the Dominican Republic has grown from 8 percent to 31 percent, and the teledensity has increased to 85 percent. INDOTEL goal is to reach to 50 percent of Internet connectivity by the year 2010, which would be the highest in Latin-American.
Another program undertaken by INDOTEL with the support of the expansion of the broadband network in the Dominican Republic is the installation of more than a thousand “Virtual Classrooms” all over the country, allowing to the general public easy access to computers, Internet and virtual libraries with no charge. The response on the people, especially children, teenagers and the youth, has been incredible. The children have gone from not even touching use a computer ever before, to using the tools of the Internet to do their school assignments. The most extraordinary outcome of this access to the digital world is the story about two teenagers in a very remote and poor village of the country were able to create a wi-fi network using a cooking pot as an antenna. With this rudimentary wi-fi network and a computer that they assembled also by themselves, they were able to navigate Internet in an impressive display of ingenuity.
This incredible story received international coverage by CNN (in Spanish) , TELEMUNDO and UNIVISION, and helped the two teenagers involved to receive the “National Creativity Award” . INDOTEL also rewarded them and their village with an installation of a microway equipment to facilitate the access to Internet to all the populace.
By: Javier Garcia, INDOTEL, NAB April 20, 2009
