CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The aim of this paper is toanalyze policy interventions to address digital inequalities in five different Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico) duringthe first three months after the outbreak of COVID-19 reached the region(March-June 2020).The mentioned countries havebeen chosen for two main reasons. First, as they are the biggest in the region in terms of population, economies and per capita gross product (ECLAC 2019). Second, because they have exhibited responses to all the variables proposed for theanalysis: a) access and continuity of connectivity services; b) traffic, data consumption and content; c) infrastructure, network management and radiospectrum; and d) compensations for telecommunications companies.The study draws on an analysisof the set of regulations and specific policy-making actions introduced in the field of connectivity in the countries under review, as well as official documents prepared by the public sector, particularly by the telecommunications ministries and regulatory bodies in each country. It also draws on documents from the private sector, and statistics on ICT access and usage in the region.The main argument is putforward that Latin American governments responded quickly to the spike indemand for connectivity posed by the context of the pandemic, partly because they had learned from what had happened in other latitudes, and partly because of the legacy of public policies resulting from previous experiences in the sector. However, the digital divides that persisted from previous structural inequalities lessened the impact of the actions implemented during the first months of the pandemic. Likewise, these actions revealed that inequalities tend to increase, as a digitally underserved segment of the population becomesdeprived of access to education, health information, entertainment, and work-from-home services in their various forms in this context.

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