Financial committment to providing a sophisticated telecommunications network is currently running high in Chile, both from the state and from new players, and the result is that against all the odds it has become one of the forerunners in Latin America as a whole. Digitalisation of the network is put at 60% to 70%, cellular telephone services are presently available in three of Chile’s main cities, and there is already a significant level of optical fibre linking main exchanges. Recently, a solution was found to an on-going Chilean problem that simply does not affect any European network operator: although in places only 30 miles wide, Chile stretches down the west side of the Andes from Bolivia right down to the tip of Argentina, and it was found that the only feasible way of providing communication between north and south was to rent channels from Pan American Satellite. Responsible for this last development was Compania de Telefonos de Chile, the Santiago-based telephone utility supplier in which Telefonica de Espana will take a controlling 48% stake when contracts are finally signed next month (CI No 1,368). Representatives of CTC were present at CeBIT to demonstrate CTC’s PMOP Planning and Management of Outside Plant software system, which is claimed to reduce the phenomenal costs associated with planning and installing a nationwide telephone network by 10%. Running on IBM hardware, PMOP consists of a number of modules, each providing a graphical display that allows the network designer or manager to manipulate the various groups of information contained within the telephonic and geographic facilities database. A data conversion module codifies and normalises information from a number of different sources, puts this in graphic form where necessary, and finally checks for data inconsistencies.
Heavy Fine
The result is typically a series of precise scaled maps and tables that include all the information likely to be relevant to the network designer. Other modules cater for the updating of stored information, and a facilities consulting module enables several users to display on screen proposed network distribution, channelling and cabling, and to edit the data set corresponding to the part of the map they have decided to isolate. Further modules lead through to development of the network itself, and to the print-out of final reports and plans. CTC is presently using the PMOP system as it works with the Chilean Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications to add another 600,000 lines – virtually all of them digital – to the public network by the end of 1992. The investment involved in this is put at $1,200m, and accordingly, CTC reckons its PMOP system will save it around $120m – not bad considering that the cost of developing and implementing the system itself is put at only $2.5m. But CTC’s part in the advancement of Chilean telecommunications comes at a cost – if the 600,000 mark is not reached, CTC will be heavily fined – and CTC readily admits that it could not do without the money that Telefonica can, and will provide – never mind that many of CTC’s staff make no secret of the fact that they would prefer a Chilean alternative to the Spanish telecommunications giant, which has also taken a 10% piece of the other main telecommunications operator in Chile, Empresa Nacional de Telecommunicacions de Chile, or Entel. But with more plans afoot to increase the level of digitalisation to 80% in a year’s time, and to provide cellular telephone services to a further three major towns within the same period, there would not seem to be much time in hand for national sentiment.
