Law requires new minimum connection speed

By Espinosa Bellido Abogados

Peru has increased the guaranteed minimum connection speed operators are required to provide to 70% of the contracted rate (up from 40% previously). Through a new legislation (Law 31207), the government created a National Registry of Monitoring and Surveillance of Internet Services (RENAMV, for its Spanish acronym), which will be responsible for measuring internet access speeds.

The 70% speed guarantee applies to all contracts regardless of connection type or whether the customer is based in an urban or rural area. Customers are to be provided with tools to accurately measure their connection speeds.

According to TeleGeography, the legislation was introduced with the intention of protecting consumers, encouraging investment and strengthening competition, but also partially to address disruption to services that resulted from changing usage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Prior to the pandemic, customers had relied more heavily on mobile than fixed networks for internet access, and the nation’s network infrastructure was configured to support that model of usage. The introduction of measures to combat the pandemic required that users remain at home, however, and drastically altered the patterns for traffic, causing widespread disruption whilst ISPs sought to reconfigure their networks,” TeleGeography stated in its daily telecom news service.

Internet penetration in Peru has been growing steadily since 2000. In 2019, about 57 percent of the Peruvian population accessed the internet, up from approximately three percent at the beginning of the century.