Transformación digital en Chile: Aportes del Grupo IRO y colaboradores internacionales a la conectividad de zonas rurales de Chile

The demand for bandwidth in Chile and the world has grown exponentially in recent years, mainly due to the massification of technologies, applications, and digital services such as the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, and video on demand, among others. Chile’s large urban centers are connected to fiber optic trunks of different telecommunications operators and already have access networks with 5G and GPON technologies. However, in Chile, some localities have little or no connectivity to telecommunications or internet services. This hurts these localities, limiting their insertion into an increasingly digital society.

In recent years, the Transport and Telecommunications Commission of the Chilean Senate, in collaboration with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), has promoted the new Chile-Digital 2035 digital transformation strategy. Its pillars of action are “Chile connected without gaps” and “Chile digitized” focusing mainly on three areas lacking connectivity: rural areas, extreme areas, and complex urban areas.

One of the components related to telecommunications systems is related to a strategy that allows for a digital infrastructure that can provide connectivity to the three previously mentioned areas. In this context, the IRO Group (Research in Optical Networks), which is made up of academics and undergraduate and postgraduate students from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Universidad de Concepción and University College London (UK), proposes this project initiative that would allow linking academic experts in national and international telecommunications networks to offer the first group of technological and operational proposals as a solution to connectivity oriented to rural areas. This type of area is based on the fact that 100% of rural communes are present in all regions of the country except for Maule, Araucanía, Los Ríos, and Ñuble, according to the National Institute of Statistics.

This project proposes to hold meetings and an international workshop in Valparaíso between academics from the IRO group, researchers from Spain and Germany, civil society actors, and ECLAC to prepare a technical report with proposed models for solutions to connectivity in rural areas.