Bogota district council is involved in talks with Brazil’s Telemar Norte Leste (Oi) to secure financing for the expansion of Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogota (ETB), its telecom arm. Reluctant to privatise the company, the city has been seeking alternatives to selling any of its 86.6% stake in order to raise capital. Also involved in talks with the city are unnamed potential investors from South Korea. Bogota’s treasury secretary Hector Zembrano announced last week that the company needed a capital injection of COP1 billion (USD565,000) to avoid being sold off.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the number of PSTN lines supplied by ETB has been declining since 2007, dropping from 2.05 million to 1.75 million in 2010.