The Privatization of Telecommunications in Colombia: The role of Public Companies in the New Institutional Framework

In Colombia even exist telecommunication public enterprises, which compete with global companies that arrived to the country as a consequence of privatization and liberalization policies, applied more than two decades ago. The new operation rules give clear advantages to private actors, who have gotten dominance, and make the state companies to get abilities to be able to adjust themselves to new technological and institutional conditions. ETB and UNE, public companies chosen as study object, have taken in a competitive behavior, at the same time that they continue making their social function; this motivates them to get better management practices, in order to give services, nowadays nationwide. But the great investments that demand the permanent technology evolution, force to make public-private alliances, by capitalization and fusion methods, which put the continuity of their roll as tools of ICT public policy at risk.