With an investment of more than $50 million, the Puntonet company seeks to bridge the digital divide

The Ecuadorian firm signed an investment contract with the Government to increase its coverage through the deployment of physical infrastructure.

With an investment of around$50 millionThe Ecuadorian Telecommunications CompanyPantonetIt projects to increase its coverage through the deployment of physical infrastructure -red of fiber optics- as logic -cloud and cyber security-, which aims to provide connectivity services to residential or corporate end customers.

This, through an investment contract that the firm signed with the government, in order to reduce the digital divide by providing the majority of the urban and rural population from the Internet.

The signing of the agreement was betweenThe Minister of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries, Julio José Prado, yThe company's general manager, Katherin Miño, within the framework of the commitments held between the Secretary of State and several private companies for more than $ 5,000 million; Of this item 5 % will be for technology and only Puntonet will inject 20.16 % of the total, between 2021 and 2024, the company reported, which has 22 years of experience in the Ecuadorian market.

"We support the decrease in the digital divide through the growth of ports in our fiber optic network in 19.9 %, thus allowing more than 247,000 families to the Internet throughout our national territory; we will reach rural areas where the pandemic showed us how necessary it is the Internet for the quality of life of all," Miño said during the signing of the legal instrument.

Regarding the projected investment in cloud infrastructure and cyber security at the national level for the business segment, Miño explained that cloud solutions are the most demanding services, because they allow customers to operation of their applications and systems on servers that are in the cloud, these services improve productivity and reduce the operating risks of the companies that are customers of these applications.

For all this, cyber security is a fundamental factor that has been considered both for residential and corporate and cloud connectivity services, guaranteeing the confidentiality of information and not being victims of cybercriminal attacks that seek to seize information and ask for bailouts for their release.

Meanwhile, about the benefits that this investment will generate to the company, the firm stressed that they are stipulated in the Organic Law for Economic Development and Fiscal Sustainability, in the Organic Code of Production, Commerce and Investments, and in the Law of Productive Development of Ecuador.

These carry certain incentives and stability conditions to investors who plan to invest at least $ 1 million in the country such as the reduction of at least 5 points of the income tax, decreases from 25 % to 20 %, the exemption of the tax on the outflow of foreign exchange and tariffs for importation of raw material and importation of capital goods, among others.