Photo released by the US Embassy in Caracas

One of the first major challenges after the doublet earthquakes of June 24 was to restore all communications in the worst-hit areas in order to help rescue efforts and assist the survivors. At the same time, this work had to be done while keeping the rest of the country fully connected.

Venezuelan telecom companies started working in coordination with authorities around the clock in La Guaira and other parts of the country in order to assess the damage.

Meanwhile, Internet service across Venezuela has been broadly affected by the earthquakes. Communications authority Conatel announced that one of the main submarine cables used to connect us with the rest of the world suffered a major rupture, therefore reducing service capacity by around 50%. Such cable is located 1.8 kilometers from the Puerto Viejo mooring station in Catia La Mar and belongs to Cirion Technologies, which has made all the required arrangements in order to fix it as soon as possible.

To explain this situation and give us a proper picture of how our telecommunications are doing now after the disaster, Caracas Chronicles spoke with Venezuelan journalist William Peña, who specializes in this area and covers it for his website Telecomunicaciones360. 

How does the rupture of the Cirion submarine cable affect Internet connectivity in Venezuela?

The ruptured cable belongs to the main provider of international Internet links in the country. The ship (with the crew in charge of repairing it) should arrive after July 13, make a diagnosis, and then take the time to repair it. It could be a couple of days or a couple of weeks. Every company that worked with Cirion was left without any international linking.

How are the main Internet service providers working to mitigate this contingency?

More than a year ago, Conatel created an alliance with ten companies to create an IXP (Internet Exchange Point), kind of a big content administration center for the country, that optimizes traffic between companies to reduce costs. When a user looks for something like a movie from Netflix, it doesn’t have to leave the country through international cables (like the one damaged). Instead, there are large servers called Content Distribution Networks that the biggest companies like Netflix, Google, Meta, etc. put in major operators around the world.

Connectivity is now 100% nationwide, except for La Guaira state, where (by July 10) between 88% and 92% of clients are connected.

There are operators in Venezuela that already have those. What they do is store information that is in most demand. Instead of leaving the country by using the cable and looking for it in Miami, it looks for it here in those Content Distribution Networks. The government issued special permits so operators can connect through Colombia, and some mid-size companies are working on that to solve the issue with their customers. The small ones, with only two or three thousand customers, are unable to hire any additional links while the problem with Cirion is resolved.

What’s the situation with the other submarine cables that provide Internet to the country?

Of those in La Guaira state, the only one affected was Cirion’s. The Alba-1 and the GlobeNet-1 in Maiquetia don’t have any issues. The Alba-1 is state-owned, and many companies do not work with it as it has some limitations. The one from GlobeNet is operational and working normally. The other cable, Arcos-1, in Falcón state, is also operational. The connectivity crisis has been solved in part thanks to alternate services that companies are hiring. Many of those companies are trying to deliver the internet to everyone; that’s why connectivity is limited. If you have a 600 MB contract, you are getting less than half (now) because it is distributing it among customers as a product of the emergency.

What was the immediate impact of the earthquakes on the telecom infrastructure, both in general and in worst-hit areas like La Guaira?

Unfortunately, right after the earthquakes, La Guaira was cut off because the three major mobile network operators (Movistar, Movilnet and Digitel) had their cells and radio bases on top of buildings, and most of these collapsed. Those that remained standing were unable to communicate. People there were left without mobile signals or Internet service.

In the rest of the country, there were some fiber cable cuts in the case of Movistar, that left parts of the country cut-off for three and five hours, especially in Caracas. Five hours after the earthquakes, 90% of the country had mobile phone and Internet services. The same happened with the main Internet Service Providers (ISP), but there were cuts in parts, specifically with small companies that had Cirion Technologies as the main provider.

Starlink antennas are for areas that don’t have any type of coverage. They’ve worked great for rescuers and people who were trapped and didn’t have any signal.

In terms of the three major carriers, Movistar had a 50% loss, Movilnet had an average of 50-60%, while Digitel lost around just 20-25% during the first few hours after the earthquakes. Connectivity is now 100% nationwide, except for La Guaira state, where (by July 10) between 88% and 92% of clients are connected.

How is Starlink being used for the current emergency? It wasn’t authorized by Conatel before receiving a temporary permit.

Before January 3, Starlink was not welcome in the country because of the conflict that Nicolás Maduro had with Elon Musk. In February, Starlink started offering its services in Venezuela despite the lack of a license from Conatel. Starlink told potential customers that they had antennas in Venezuela but needed to pay in Colombia only in US dollars by using an international credit card. There were 60 to 70 thousand Starlink antennas here before the disaster. 

The number increased after the seismic event, but we don’t know much about it because the local authorized distributors (Daka, Multimax and Soytechno) brought a large but still limited number of antennas that later sold out. Now, they’re waiting for new lots of antennas. There are also those sold by resellers who are not authorized by Starlink and are bringing their own.

Starlink, along with its distributors, have donated around 1,600 antennas in La Guaira, and they’re used so people can connect to the Internet and make phone calls without using the mobile network. These are mostly for areas that don’t have any type of coverage. They have worked great for both rescuers and for people who were trapped and didn’t have any signal.

Censorship against many websites and digital outlets remains intact, and the government has refused to lift these blockades.

In La Guaira, there are both mobile operators working together with Starlink offering free SMS through satellite technology in areas without coverage and others using Starlink antennas to offer free wi-fi. There are some who have used their own antennas to let people talk with their families. The company even gave a free month of service to all its customers in Venezuela.

Starlink has a regional alliance with Spain’s Telefonica (which owns Movistar) and used its branch in Venezuela to ask the proper permits to Conatel and authorize the use of satellite technology, in order to help in rescue ops and remain in use for security and telemedicine.

Hours after the disaster, the blockade of X (formerly Twitter) was lifted. What happened?

On June 24 at 11 pm, Conatel made several phone calls to all mobile phone operators and ISPs ordering them to lift the blocking of X (the social media platform). They gradually obliged, but it took some time as it required a large number of blockades in some operators, especially as the ISPs were previously forced to implement it with the threat of administrative and/or legal sanctions, and even the withdrawal of their license. Meanwhile, censorship against many websites and digital outlets remains intact, and the government has refused to lift these blockades.

How has the state of Venezuela’s Internet shaped the disaster’s impact?

In 2019, Conatel sped up licenses before the growth after the pandemic in 2020. Today, it’s estimated that there are 3.6 to 3.9 million homes connected to the Internet, half of them with optic fiber. By the time of the disaster, we were in the same position as Colombia and other countries in the region. Basic Internet connections are now 100 megabits per second, and there are companies that offer one gigabyte of connectivity to users. We improved connectivity before the tragedy, which cut off a great amount of the service, but that can be recovered to where it was. What matters is that companies keep working and making an effort. There’s a lot left to do.