What can Latin America and the Caribbean Expect from the Machine Learning Revolution?
Machine Learning can help businesses organize, interpret, and use big data by extracting meaningful insights and quickly solving complex problems. It can also help guide the region’s private sector towards fully harnessing the power that data has to offer.
Rethinking the Digital Pathways of Latin America and the Caribbean
Latin America and the Caribbean need to renew their digital infrastructure if they aim to provide the quality of services that their users need. It’s time to improve the region’s connectivity landscape.
Can 'flotovoltaics' be a future partner for hydropower systems?
To address changing paradigms, a new technology has been proposed: hydropower plants that enable solar generation or hybrid hydro-solar systems.
Securitization: What Can It Do for Lending Techs in Latin America and the Caribbean?
Fintech lenders in the region identify financing as one of their major challenges. Securitization can help them in accessing more investors and drive down financing costs.
How to finance mobile network operators in Latin America and the Caribbean?
Mobile network operators offer subsidized phones against advanced payments at a reduced price. From a financial point of view, it is not sustainable.
Digital highways and their similarity to transportation highways
Poor bandwidth infrastructure is like traveling on a dirt road. The technological disruption we are experiencing is something unprecedented. When we compare it to the industrial revolution and the enormous impact it has on per capita gross domestic product (GDP), we can assert with total certainty that this digital revolution is changing everything, from the corporate, to the social, and even the political order. Quite rightly we call it the industrial revolution 4.0. This explosion of technology occurs in the context of the world of data, data that can only be moved with the necessary infrastructure of digital networks. Thus, just like in any traditional highway infrastructure project, without routes to permit the movement of trucks, buses, and automobiles, we could not connect destinations, trades and people. In the world of technology, data would be the means of mobility like automobiles, and networks would be the digital highways or routes available in a country, which is directly determined by the country’s regulatory framework and capital investments in the country made by mobile or satellite telephone service operators. To put the importance of the digital highway in perspective, and using the example of Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, CEO of Telefónica España: “It took landline phones 75 years to reach 100 million users and it’s taken Pokémon Go 23 days. Why? Because if networks are digitized, the capacity to distribute a digital product is immense.” In order for companies like YouTube, Airbnb, Netflix and Uber —to cite a few— to offer their services and connect data, information, services and products, it is vital to build and invest in an adequate digital highway. The data coming from these digital highways no doubt have the potential to improve lives and Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete summarizes this as follows: “Analog life will merge with digital life. Buying patterns, how cars are driven, gas, water and electricity meters, microwaves, the refrigerator, the dishwasher…everything will be connected to the Internet and transmit data.” Thus, we must have digital highways so that this exponential quantity of data can be processed. To ensure the positive effects of the 21st century’s digital economy, constructing and investing in those digital highways must be the priority for economic development and social inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean. IDB Invest has invested and will continue to invest in the region in projects that help to expand the digital highway, because we know that 10% penetration by broadband has an average economic effect of 2% to 3% on GDP and 2.6% on productivity. Subscribe to receive more content like this! [mc4wp_form]