The main objective of the Red Compartida connectivity project is to bring coverage to remote areas where the large operators do not reach, however, this plan has faced great challenges, such as financial, leading the company to stop its deployment, which It has resulted in a delay in its coverage milestone, which was budgeted for 2024, now it will be until 2028.
CFE Telecommunications and Internet for All has also focused on the deployment of infrastructure such as the installation of telecommunications towers, agreements with satellite companies to provide Internet access in public squares, but until now it is not clear how many people it has reached impact.
José Luis Peralta, general director of digital transformation of the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT), warned that due to this perspective and challenges faced by both connectivity projects, there is an urgency to completely change the vision of closing the digital divide and begin to see it from the perspective of communities that still do not have access to the internet and technologies such as digital devices and thus better understand what must be done.
“It may be that in certain places there is connectivity but some people do not see the point of connecting and it is that public policy is made from above and experts meet and say what they think people need, but to make sense of connectivity it is It is necessary to go with people to find out what they need for their daily life, their work, their culture”, Peralta explained to Expansión.
According to data from ENDUTIH last year, 78.6% of the population is already connected, which means an increase of three percentage points, however, even 21.4% of Mexicans still do not have access to the Internet, which is worrying in a context where technological developments are advancing by leaps and bounds, which may mean that people without access to connectivity remain digitally behind.
This can be reflected in the need for digital transformation, which is becoming increasingly relevant not only for companies, but also for users, since jobs increasingly require new skills and as long as people do not have access to technology, they could lose options and attractiveness in the labor market.
Therefore, another point that should be discussed more forcefully is how to get people to access the devices, since they are still expensive for a certain spectrum of the population.
“Before, there was a social coverage fund that could well work for the issue of access to services, but now it is not there, so it is necessary to look for options for this because we have a real problem in coverage and accessibility,” said Beatriz Paredes, president of the foreign relations commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and member of the Special Commission for follow-up on the implementation of the 2030 agenda in Mexico.