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Telecommunications has recently joined the list of Ecuador’s significant FDI pulls, right as the country ramps up its ambitious digital strategy and looks to improve the flows of cash needed to expand telecommunications infrastructure. As Andrés Michelena, Minister of Telecommunications and Information Society, told The Business Year; “For every 10% growth in spectrum bandwidth, the country can grow 1% in GDP terms.” Outlining plans to capitalize on this reality, the minister continued; “Currently, Ecuador has only consumed 26% of the electromagnetic spectrum. The country has an untapped market of 70%, which still can be used for commercial purposes. That 26% currently assigned to telephone companies is being renegotiated for the next 20 years. The ministry will be allocating 35% of the band spectrum over the next year for current or new operators. In the last five years, we have received about USD1.7 billion for assigning the spectrum. This amount can increase as the spectrum is further assigned.” The country currently counts on three main operators: Telefónica and Claro, which both belong to private international companies, and the Ecuadorian state-owned CNT, which is undergoing a process of optimization by passing its management into private hands. Discussions have been held at government level to allow the entry of a fourth operator that could contribute to the increase of market competition and subsequently bring up service quality. Commenting on the recent progress of Ecuador’s ICT sector, Ernesto Kruger, CEO of Kruger Corporation, told The Business Year that “Over the last five years, the telecommunications area has been growing significantly in Ecuador. The network has improved, and now we can talk about a country covered by fiber optics that is second in Latin America in terms of internet speed. The number of people with internet access has increased, and this ecosystem has helped digital businesses flourish. E-commerce has become an important tool, while data use and IP have expanded.” Electronics providers are seeing in Ecuador an early-adoption market where it is also easy to test products. We sat with representatives from Sony and Epson to discuss about this pattern and how the market is responding to some of their most advanced products.