For most of us, turning on the mobile to consult information or call a family member is a daily act, which we hardly attach importance to or value. We have already forgotten that time when you could only locate someone by calling the landline. And many of us haven’t even lived through the days when no one had a phone at home.
Times have changed a lot, and technology has greatly facilitated our lives, but in many regions of the planet, due to their low accessibility conditions, communications are very complicated.
Disconnecting is very nice, yes, and we all love to turn off the mobile when the holidays arrive or we want to enjoy nature or silence quietly. But we have the peace of mind that, for example, in case of an emergency, we can turn it on again to ask for help.
Telefónica’s Internet for All project aims to connect the disconnected, to prevent people from being left behind in the digitization process. “There is one thing we are convinced of: the digital world demands that everyone be connected. There can be no digitization with excluded people. And for people to be included, we need to extend our networks to all the confines of the societies in which we operate . And therefore it is a responsibility of Telefónica, and it is a responsibility absolutely aligned with our values ”, says José Juan Haro, Director of Public Policies and Wholesale Business for Latin America at Telefónica. “The quality of life improves significantly when they are connected to the Internet.”
Life-saving technology
One of the areas where the benefit of having good communications is most obvious is health. Many remote parts of the world do not have quick access to a health center, much less a hospital, and when an accident or emergency of any kind occurs, being able to reach out for help can save lives.
This is what happened to Llezmín, a resident of Negro Urco, a small native community located in the middle of the Peruvian jungle and which is one of the areas benefited by the Internet for All project. Llezmín began to feel the first labor contractions at midnight at home. Six hours later, the pain continued but the baby had not finished being born. She went to the health center, where Alexander, the nursing technician who looks after the health of the inhabitants of Negro Urco, treated her.
“The patient arrived in severe pain. Six hours of labor was not normal for a multiparous woman, who already had six previous children. So I called the Santa Clotilde hospital with my cell phone to see an obstetrician. I told him that I had this patient, that the baby did not lower his head through the birth canal. The obstetrician told me that we had to urgently evacuate her, ”Alexander recalls.
In the absence of an ultrasound machine, it was very difficult to establish a diagnosis. The baby could have the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck, or it could be too big. After so many hours of labor, some type of fetal distress could be occurring. The lives of Llezmín and her baby were in serious danger.
“I was very worried, Llezmín tells us with her baby in her arms. “Thank God we had the technology and we were able to communicate much faster. I was evacuated by plane to the Iquitos hospital and I was able to have my baby there. I am very grateful to technology ”.
Thanks to the existence of the mobile network, Alexander explains, many other cases of serious accidents, snake bites or pregnant women with risky pregnancies or deliveries have been solved without dire consequences: Doris contracted two types of malaria during her pregnancy. fourth baby and in the eighth month of pregnancy had to be hospitalized in Iquitos with a worrying picture of seizures and high fever; Felipe suffered a cut in the artery in his left foot when a shotgun accidentally fired from a hunting trap. Cases like these cannot wait for a transfer of several days by barge to the nearest city and communication for the coordination of evacuations is vital.
Connecting the unconnected
And it is that life in Negro Urco is not easy. It is a town that does not reach any road, and its main access route is by river. To travel to other communities or to the city of Iquitos, which is the closest, requires many hours and even several days of navigation. Life in this remote part of the planet is not exactly easy.
“Here we have many difficulties. We do not have basic services such as drinking water, canalization, sanitation … We have an electricity generator, but we only have three hours of light a day. Nor do we have doctors, only two sanitary technicians, which is insufficient to attend to all the health problems of the population ”, explains José Cubas Coronel, the highest authority in the community.
But undoubtedly the greatest difficulty lies in its isolation, which makes it very difficult for any supply to arrive and for the population to move to other communities to enjoy services that are not provided here. For this reason, when Telefónica decided to implement the mobile phone and internet service in Negro Urco, the lives of its inhabitants took a 180 degree turn. Suddenly, a channel of communication with the outside was opened. And what is more important, an immediate communication channel.
“The arrival of mobile telephony in our community has been very important because we have been very forgotten and isolated,” Coronel continues. At first we had radio to communicate. After that came the GILAT, a satellite phone. But it was two or three days operational and then the signal went out. In practice we were isolated and to give a warning to someone it was done through letters or written messages. Everything took a long time. Sometimes, for example, a father became ill and when his children received the news and traveled here they would already find him in the cemetery. “
Access to a globalized education
In the field of education, being connected means accessing information that could not otherwise be accessed. In addition to these fundamental services, the project has proven that the local economy is transformed when the Internet arrives.
Royer Noriega, a nursing technician in Tuta Pishco, another of these small communities where the mobile connection has reached, also talks about other advantages of the cellular network: “The good thing that it has brought me is, one, in my work , for example to investigate some things, some doubts, for example, what can I give to a patient who has something complicated. I am investigating many things that I did not even know, I am learning. Also to solve my problem with a patient, I call Santa Clotilde. To a doctor, who is on duty. I have a query, and they solve me ”, he tells us.
A few months ago, Internet para Todos arrived in Atalaya, a city of 25,000 inhabitants, most of them dedicated to cocoa farming. It was a party. And it was a party because simply these people believe that with the mobile Internet, their product, which is cocoa, will be able to be better placed in the national and international market ”.
Today, with Internet for all, it has been possible to reach, in a sustainable way, more than 3,000 isolated populations in Peru, and more than 600,000 people already have access to Internet services and mobile telephony in remote parts of the jungle, the Peruvian coast and mountains. But the goal is to reach each and every corner of the Andean country so that no one is disconnected.
Computers arrive at Negro Urco
Professor Tito Tapullima came to the Negro Urco community in 2005 as a primary school teacher. He is now Director of the Bilingual Primary and Secondary Educational Institution of this community. He excitedly shows us the 5 computers that he received at the school a few days ago.
“The arrival of the Internet here at Negro Urco was like a dream. For the entire population and for me it is a wonderful thing, here the information has always arrived very late. So it was a huge problem ”, he tells us. “ Both the community and the educational institution are giving us many benefits. We have a small library, but it is not enough. Now the teacher when looking for information can access a web page and can develop materials to adapt the classes to the needs and interests of the students. And as for students, the Internet has also made it possible to strengthen their level of knowledge, to discover what is happening in the world. Now, all the information is in our hands. There has been a total change in the community ”, concludes the professor.
And it is that in Negro Urco they no longer know how to live without telecommunications. “The antenna is in Huaman Urco, and sometimes due to time and height there are signal problems. So people call, “what happened? What happened? When there is no signal, everyone kicks, ”laughs José Cubas.
“Sometimes I watch the news on YouTube, sometimes cartoons. I talk to friends from different parts on WhatsApp, on Facebook ”, explains a teenager from the small village.
Internet: a source of opportunities
Romario Baca was a brilliant high school student in the native community of Tuta Pishco. His life changed when his aunt called him from Lima to tell him about the State Grant 18 program, an aid that the Peruvian State offers to people living in poverty or extreme poverty so that they can study at university. So Romario looked for information on his mobile phone and went to the city of Iquitos to apply for this scholarship.
“I finished my high school in 2013 and I came to take my exam here at the Scientific University of Peru, at the Faculty of Education. I entered the second place with 75 points and there were only 7 vacancies. And of the 7 vacancies I have been left alone in my town, “he explains.
Romario is the first person from Tuta Pishco to have entered university. His is a giant step within a very humble community in which almost all its inhabitants live from agriculture. He, perhaps without being conscious, has opened a door that remained closed. And that would not have been possible without technology.
“I am studying to educate children and to solve the problems that are generated in my town, since the vast majority do not have the opportunity to leave there, much less study at a university. And I also want to be an example for all of them. The first thing I looked for on the Internet is the origin of my culture. I needed to know more about my culture. And I was reading, reading, and whoever reads has an opinion anywhere. Now I have new knowledge and I will be able to share it with the people of my community ”.
Romario is the first stone of a building to be built. Perhaps when he returns he can sow the seeds of curiosity to learn in his future students. That edifice will rise slowly, because education, without a doubt, is the great pillar that sustains the progress of societies.
Objective: that no one feels left out
“Most of Telefónica’s effort over the last 30 years in Latin America has been concentrated in the big cities, in the big urban centers. In rural areas, communications have been mainly voice communications or where we have not been able to extend our networks. In geographies as complicated as Peru, where there is jungle or mountain areas up to 6,000 meters above sea level, there are operational difficulties and commercial difficulties: our network, our channels, do not reach these places ” , explains José Juan Haro.
“Now – he continues – we are trying to reinvent the way we build networks and operate them, the way networks are structured today can be improved: virtualization offers us hope of substantial cost reduction. The use of data allows us to significantly improve the understanding of demand and the way in which we deploy networks. And third, questioning the entire vendor ecosystem allows us to accelerate innovation. Thinking of the network as two separate elements, a hardware element and a software element, allows us to introduce radical innovation in the software layer and streamline the way we improve day by day ”.
That is Telefónica’s great commitment: that no one feels forgotten, that no one feels excluded. And behind this commitment is the work of many people to take the networks to all the confines of Latin America: “ This project has given us the opportunity to feel what it really means to transform people’s lives. Connecting them to the world is something that is spectacular, and I think that is worth fighting for ”, concludes José Juan Haro.
