Internet in Chile

Before this, Chile had previously attempted the Cybersyn project in 1971, which aimed to establish an almost real-time economic information transfer system with the government, but it did not succeed.

[2] These connections are provided entirely by the private sector and are available in various technologies such as hybrid fiber-coaxial, fiber to the home, mobile broadband, satellite Internet, and xDSL, offering a wide range of speeds and costs.

To facilitate international communication, Chile relies mainly on five submarine cables situated at different points along the national territory.

[3] Before the introduction of the internet in Chile, the country communicated abroad via Letters, the Correos de Chile service had been started by Chile in 1747 (when it was still part of the Spanish crown)[4] it was not until 1851 that a telegraphy service began for communication with the outside world, initially in 1851 wired and officially wireless since 1904[5] (with a certain role being played by the Vía Trans Radio Chilena Compañía de Radiotelegrafía, which would become later in VTR), later communication with the outside arose via Telephone -whose implementation had begun in Valparaíso in 1878 by Compañía Chilena de Telefonos de Edison -which in 1930 would become the Compañía Telefónica de Chile- Perhaps the closest previous experience to the contemporary internet was the development of Cybersyn, in 1970 the world was experiencing the Cold War and Chile was led by a government that sought to establish a socialist state, After nationalizing and annexing various socially owned companies to the State, the Allende government's economic system faced the need to coordinate information on existing state-owned companies and those recently nationalized.

[1] With the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, the control center was destroyed, documents and existing telephone and teletype infrastructure were destroyed, Cybersyn could never be applied and was irrevocably aborted, additionally with the change of Cold War bloc by the Government Junta of Chile (1973) – which advocated a free market- a network that running a Self-managed economy made no sense.

and mailings between said universities using 300-bit modems and the CTC telephone line (which at that time had national coverage), imitating a sort of Intranet model.

[13] In May 1999, the Chilean government decreed a change in the rates for those who access the Internet using telephone connections, a charging formula called "Local Tranche" would be used.

[11] However, the infrastructure and access to the Internet via cable modem, was rather modest in its early years, it was only after 2004 when Internet access via Hybrid fiber-coaxial began to become widespread, granting with a commercial strategy of VTR the launch of its best-known promotion: the Triple Pack -which lowered the cost of contracting telephony, television and internet as a whole- and the merger of VTR with Metrópolis Intercom S.A.[11] In 2002, the first third-generation networks began to be implemented thanks to the different agreements made abroad by SmartCom and Bellsouth, which allowed them to sell 1xRTT equipment capable of browsing at 150 kbit/s, with which the debut of the Mobile broadband, which would only begin to spread in the 2010s, with the increase in the issuance of a contract (postpaid), to the detriment of communication through recharges (prepaid), in 2013 the 4G and in 2022, 5G.

[17] The development of the Internet in Chile until 2006, was based on the conversion and reuse of two previously existing technologies in Chile, on the one hand, the Telephone line of the Compañía de Telefonos de Chile -which in some sectors it dated back to 1880–, via Digital subscriber line technology and on the other hand the cable television network of VTR -which in some sectors dating back to 1987–, via Hybrid fiber-coaxial technology, both had wide coverage in the national territory, but also had important technical limitations -especially the Telephone line- in terms of speed, latency and state of the cabling (causing the rapid decline of xDSL networks from 2015 to the present).

[11] Residential Satellite Internet in Chile is a rather limited phenomenon, most of its consumers are part of the economic development of the Rural area, the domestic Rural area uses mostly Mobile broadband, since 2014, Movistar markets Satellite Broadband,[19] to which would be added the following year Claro Chile,[20] in 2020 Hughes Communications would begin its commercialization, to which would be added the following year Starlink.

In 1999, the Servicio de Impuestos Internos, the government entity in charge of collecting taxes, received almost 90,000 declarations of income through the Internet, of the million total income statements for that year.,[23] since the 2010s, a significant number of government procedures have been digitized, in addition to a progressive adoption of the Online banking and Electronic Commerce, coinciding with an accelerated globalization process in Chile from the years 2000.

Regarding mobile internet consumption, it increased 26% to 13 Gigabytes in the same period, a situation even more accentuated with the COVID-19 lockdowns, where the network was exposed to intensive use, forcing operators to strengthen their existing infrastructure and society and the Government of Chile to digitize many of its benefits, emerging massively Teleworking, Telemedicine, Distance Education, Online banking absolutely, the Judiciary of Chile remotely, the Streaming and other services that are maintained to date.

[26] For the 2024 Chile wildfires in the Valparaíso region, due to the fire, telephone antennas were destroyed, as well as satellite backup systems and several kilometers of trunk and domestic fiber cabling, which added to the power outage widespread due to damage from fires and an unprecedented overload of the fixed and mobile network [27] caused that around 7 p.m. on February 2, 2023, all of Viña del Mar and Quilpué experienced a "blackout" of fixed and mobile internet from all companies, leaving IP Telephony and Transbank out of service (and with this out of service the processing of payment transactions with credit cards, debit banking and prepaid), although internet companies quickly activated National Emergency Automatic Roaming (RAN) (which is essentially automatically sharing their antennas, making communication redundant in case of failure at some point) and portable satellite teleports for the use of Chilean Armed Forces, Carabineros de Chile, Investigations Police of Chile, Firefighters of Chile and the emergency health services, domestic connectivity took several weeks to return to normal.

[52][53] As a result, multiple PITs are generated that are connected to several others, promoting the direct local exchange of traffic between operators and the reduction of cost and latency for users.