Argentine Communications Agency Approves Reliable and Smart Telecommunications Service, Establishes Use of Frequency Bands to Provide It

Resolutions No. 2385/2022 and No. 2386/2022, issued by the Argentine Communications Agency (ENACOM), were published in the Official Gazette on December 28 and 29, 2022. Resolution No. 2385/2022 approved, among other issues, the General Regulations for the Reliable and Smart Telecommunications Service (STeFI), while Resolution No. 2386 assigned the frequency band between 3300 and 3600 MHz to the Fixed Service and the Land Mobile Service (both withing the primary category), and ordered the use of the frequency band between 3300 and 3600 MHz, in time division duplex (TDD) mode, for the provision of STeFI.

The Reliable and Smart Telecommunications Service is defined as “fixed and mobile wireless service that, using high spectral efficiency digital access technologies and flexible network architectures, supports advanced mobile broadband applications with high reliability and low latency, and massive machine type communications, among others.”

Further, the resolutions established that:

1. the geographic area of operation may be local, regional, or national, and this will be determined in each frequency band allocation process.
2. the service will be provided using the frequency bands attributed to fixed and mobile services, and identified according to the Argentine Table Frequency Allocation (Cuadro de Atribución de Bandas de Frecuencias de la República Argentina).
3. the provider can freely select the appropriate technology and network architecture to provide an efficient service, in accordance with the regulation guidelines.
4. STeFI users may be a person or a machine; and
5. STeFI providers may celebrate Active Infrastructure Sharing agreements with other providers of the same service, to comply with their obligations.

The regulation applies to licensees of information technology services and is mandatory in all Argentina. Therefore, a license and the registration of this service, under the provisions of Law No. 27078 as amended, will be required to provide STeFI.

Technical standards related to STeFI and the General and Particular Terms and Conditions for the assignment of the frequency bands to STeFI are not included in the Resolutions. They are delegated to ENACOM's Chairman of the Board of Directors.