Barcelona hosted last 23-24 November the 14th plenary meeting of the Latin American Forum of Telecommunications Regulatory Authorities (Regulatel). The gathering was preceded by an international seminar on the activities, financing and sustainability of regulatory networks, which included speeches by representatives from the academic world (University of Berlin and Barcelona and ESADE Barcelona Business School) and the World Bank. The seminar especially enabled comparisons to be made between the current Latin American and European regulatory networks, indicating similarities and the different levels of integration.
The results of work by the working groups on regulatory policies, broadband and sector indicators (Sirtel) were presented at the plenary meeting, which also elected the Regulatel governing bodies. The presidency will be held by Colombia in 2012 and Costa Rica in 2013. The Management Committee will comprise the outgoing presidency (Dominican Republic), Colombia and Costa Rica, as well as Mexico, Cuba and Honduras. The work was carried out in the scope of round tables on the sustainability of Regulatel, with its secretary-general presenting a proposal to reform the statutes of this Forum. The 2012 action plan was also presented and the next meetings scheduled (extraordinary meeting to study changing the statutes provisionally scheduled for June 2012 and plenary meeting in November 2012). Lastly, the gathering also included a presentation panel and debate about ICANN, with an especially interesting presentation on the assignment of new generic top level domains (GTLD) in 2012.
