Things in Venezuela keep finding ways to get worse. Because of acute shortages, people cannot find basics like toilet paper. Now, it is likely to be harder to make overseas telephone calls or watch pay TV.
The problem is this: The global drop in oil prices has made US dollars much more scarce in Venezuela — which is dependent almost totally on petroleum for hard currency. So local telecoms companies do not have US dollars to pay international suppliers.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s leftist government controls the currency market and distributes US dollars to private companies as it sees fit.
The government owes local companies about US$700 million, which these firms need to honor obligations with foreign providers, according to the Chamber of Telecommunications Services Companies.
So as a result, for instance, the Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica is this week scheduled to temporarily suspend long distance telephone calls to countries such as the US, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Colombia and Panama.
Mobile phone company Digitel, which is privately owned, has halted long distance calling services and international roaming since Saturday last week because it cannot reach agreement with providers on new payment timetables.
However, it is not just telephone services that are affected.
State-run television company Cantv, which provides cable service said it is reviewing contracts with content providers, which means there is less to watch on TV in Venezuelan living rooms.
“For two weeks now, I have lost six of my favorite channels,” said Isael Gonzalez, a 46-year-old motorcycle taxi driver and Cantv subscriber. “They were the ones showing movies and cartoons — so I decided to unplug the whole thing. What use is it if the channels I like are off air?”
Drisley Petaquero, 36, also said several channels had been cut from her father’s Directv pay-TV service.
“Especially the ones showing comics — there used to be five and now there are just two,” she said. “He complained to the company and they told him they were performing maintenance work.”
The state regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission, admits there is a problem and blames the lack of US dollars.
The government says Venezuela’s oil revenue went from US$37.2 billion in 2014 to US$12.6 billion last year, and the country is saddled with commercial debts of US$12.5 billion.
Companies in the country are desperate to raise rates.
Industry sources say that Telefonica’s mobile branch, Movistar, was given permission in 2014 to raise its rates by 35 percent, while inflation was running at 68 percent; last year it won a 35 percent rise, with inflation at 181 percent.
A basic home bundle — cable TV, a land line and wireless Internet is cheap in Venezuela: about 1,100 Venezuelan bolivares (US$111 or US$3.54 dollars depending on which exchange rate used).
Still, regulators denied local operators permission to rate their rates in February and last month.
The operators said they need a rate hike badly because foreign providers’ costs are rising in the wake of a 37 percent devaluation of the Venezuelan bolivar in February and because of rampant inflation.
All the debt and the delays in gaining rate hikes also mean the sector cannot make the investments it needs — about US$1 billion a year. So coverage and service quality are suffering.
With prices so low, Venezuelans are tripping over each other to sign up for cell phone and mobile Internet packages, but the industry cannot keep up because of the lack of investment, the chamber of commerce said.
So networks are likely to become saturated and service is likely to decline, the chamber said in a recent report.
Venezuela is one of Latin America’s largest consumers of mobile data.
The country has 65 percent penetration in cable and satellite TV, and 99 percent cell phone penetration, regulators say.
All this comes on top of the day to day problems Venezuelans face just trying to buy basic necessities like food and medicine.
his also stems from the shortage of US dollars.
The economy contracted 5.7 percent last year.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion