Public Consultation on Conditions of Access and Use of Most Beneficial Networks

On December 11, 2018, the Argentine Secretariat of Information and Communications Technologies (the "SETIC") issued Resolution No. 4/2018 (the "Resolution") that declared the opening of the public consultation procedure established in the General Rules of Public Hearings and Consultation Documents for Communications, approved by Resolution SC No. 57/1996 of the then Ministry of Communications, regarding the document "Public Consultation on Conditions of Access and Use of Most Beneficial Networks" (the "Document") that confirms the Annex to the Resolution.

Among the considerations of the Resolution, it was stated that both the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) recently highlighted the importance of extending the benefits of broadband interactions between machines to sectors such as healthcare, transportation and agriculture.

The importance of carrying out a public consultation for the actors and sectors involved in the Internet of Things and Machine-to-Machine ("IoT" and "M2M"), on the challenges and difficulties that the development of these technologies present, in view of the development of services and M2M solutions, and in particular their use and intelligent measurement solutions.

Hence, the Document consisted of six subheadings where the participants could send their comments, suggestions or answers: A. Social and Economic Impact; B. Radioelectric Spectrum; C. Interconnection and Roaming; D. Data Security and Privacy; E. M2M Communications and Intelligent Measurements; and F. Additional comments.

Among the points of the Document, the interested parties found questions such as:

• "Do you consider that the State should encourage investment in the IoT and M2M ecosystem?"
• "Should there be a range of radio spectrum attributed to M2M?"
• "How should M2M service providers guarantee protection of the privacy of user data?" and
• "What regulatory measures could be adopted to promote the development of M2M services related to Smart Metering (Smart Metering) and Smart Grid (Smart Grid) services and solutions?"

Finally, the Resolution established a period of 20 working days from its publication, which was extended in January 2019, for all the interested parties to make their presentations in the Platform for Distance Procedures (“TAD” after its Spanish acronym), in accordance with the provisions of Decree No. 1063/2016.