COMMUNICATIONS-COLOMBIA: BRINGING INTERNET TO SMALL TOWNS

STAFF
Inter Press Service English News Wire
05-04-2000
BOGOTA, May 3 (IPS) -- The House of Culture in Filandia, a
town of 16,000 in Colombia's Andean region, has become the
favorite hang-out joint for students from the municipality and
nearby towns who in their free-time discover the mysteries of the
Internet.
Filandia was chosen for the pilot project of the Communication
Ministry's Internet Program for Small Municipalities, which this
year will install a computer and printer hooked up to the
worldwide web in a locale open to the public in 670 towns of
2,000 to 40,000 residents.
Because of the heavy demand, specific schedules have had to be
set up in order to allow equal access to the information
superhighway by youngsters as well as adults, "who now prefer to
sit in front of the computer rather than play pool in the bar,"
Mara Restrepo, director of Filandia's House of Culture, told
IPS.
For youngsters, surfing the web "is like a party, and for
adults, this convenient, fast and economical communication tool
means a valuable savings of their time," she added.
Demand has been so high that the mayor's office has joined in
the project, installing two more computers in the House of
Culture, after the project installed the first computer on Mar
13.
The Internet Program for Small Municipalities is part of the
Compartel project, designed to provide basic telephony to 6,565
towns which do not yet have telephone services.
Carlos Balln, the manager of the Compartel project, told IPS
that in the small towns involved in the program, the
Communications Ministry will install a locale where "anyone from
the community will be able to log onto the Internet, within the
scheduled time-limits, at competitive rates."
The project forms part of a development plan that the
government has dubbed "the Leap to Internet," consisting of
making the latest computer technologies available to all sectors
of the population.
"We don't want people in the countryside to feel that the 21st
century is leaving them behind," said Balln. The aim is to
provide access to the latest technologies to "low-income sectors,
who cannot afford a computer or a monthly subscription to
Internet," he explained.
The Internet centers function like on-line cafes, but with
subsidized rates, and with experts available to provide tips and
pointers on how to surf the web.
The main aim of the project is the creation of a government
"Intranet," to which 3.5 million people -- of a total population
of 40 million -- would be connected.
The Intranet forms part of President Andrs Pastrana's "Agenda
de Conectividad," (Agenda for Connectivity) through which $130
million will be invested in social communication projects.
The Agenda de Conectividad also includes educational programs
like distance teaching over the Internet, designed to boost the
quality of education.
There are presently some 500,000 monthly subscribers to
Internet in the large cities of this conflict-torn country -- a
number that is expected to rise to 700,000 by the end of the
year.
But at a price tag of $20 to $40 a month, Colombia's poor, who
account for 45 percent of the population, have no chance of
access to the web without a program like the pilot project in
Filandia.

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