On July 9, 2020, the government has announced the extension of the “Solidarity Connectivity Plan”, an initiative that was originated at the end of March (please see our News Alert dated April 6, 2020) and is intended to allow telecommunications users to maintain connectivity, in case they are unable to pay their bill for reasons of force majeure.
The plan that shall now assist the 60% of the most vulnerable people according to the Social Registry of Households, had already been extended (initially it was contemplated to last 60 days), however, the telecommunications operators and the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications have agreed this time to improve the characteristics of the services initially offered.
Thus, for example, in the case of fixed Internet, a speed of 2 mbps was contemplated and now it shall be between 2 mbps and 4 mbps, or for post-paid mobile users, a mobile Internet speed of 256 kbps was contemplated and now it shall be between 256 kbps and 512 kbps. Finally, for prepaid mobile users, the sending and receiving of emails, access to certain social networks and to certain government websites was included, and now they shall be able to access the Internet with speeds between 256 kpbs and 512 kpbs, in addition to 100 SMS.
It should be noted that the possibility to request the extension of this benefit shall be for a period of 3 months from July 1, 2020, so a beneficiary user could request the extension until September 30 of this year, and the benefit coverage will last until December 31, 2020. In any case, for mobile prepaid users the benefit of free access to social networks shall be maintained until July 31, 2020.
Finally, this benefit is only applicable to users that are already clients of each operator and shall not be applied to new users. However, for prepaid users who would like to access the plan, they must link their mobile number to their Tax Payer Number, in addition to being within the 60% most vulnerable people.
