📡 Chile Wants to Connect Antarctica. Four Municipalities Could Not Contract Internet

There are two conversations about connectivity in Chile that almost never meet. In one, people talk about 6G, a fiber cable all the way to Antarctica, and Chile as a digital hub for Latin America. In the other, a municipality publishes a tender for mobile telephony and mobile internet, and nobody wins it.

Both are true, and both showed up in the last few weeks among the stories ViaMind Radar has been selecting. Many of them come from public documents almost nobody reads: Mercado Público files, decrees, and Subtel releases. Together they say something more interesting than either one does alone.

The showcase: what Chile is announcing

I start with what is visible, because there is a lot of it. Entel completed 5G coverage in every station and tunnel of the Santiago Metro: 143 stations, with speeds of up to 400 Mbps. At peak hour, nearly 10 terabytes pass through that network in a single hour.

It is not an isolated case. As of June 2026, Chile had 10.8 million 5G connections, 31.8% more than a year earlier. 4G was moving in the opposite direction, and the gap between the two technologies was down to just 627 thousand accesses. In fixed internet, fiber is already 87.3% of the market.

On top of that, Subtel presented the National Digital Plan 2026–2036: switch off 3G, prepare the path to 6G, and unlock a projected US$2 billion in telecommunications investment through 2030. It also signed an agreement with OnLab and Corfo to pilot 5G and 6G in mining, health, and logistics.

And the most ambitious bet: the Antarctic Cable. The feasibility study, financed by CAF, concluded that the project is viable. It would be up to 4,100 km of polar fiber, with operations projected for 2034, to serve 55 facilities from 21 countries that today live with a serious digital constraint.

As strategy, all of this makes sense. But a plan is not a network. The question is what happens when it has to be executed.

Sources: Santiago Metro completes its 5G network; 5G reaches 10.8 million connections; National Digital Plan; Subtel and OnLab; Antarctic Cable.

What the documents say

Here the conversation changes. On Mercado Público, four municipal tenders for telephony and internet went deserted between August and October: Rancagua, Perquenco, Quilaco, and Ancud. Rancagua had estimated CLP 135 million for cellular telephony and mobile internet. Perquenco, CLP 57 million. The files do not say why they went deserted, or whether there were any bids.

The Coquimbo Health Service was looking for six satellite phones for its director and for the hospitals in Vicuña, Andacollo, Combarbalá, Salamanca, and Los Vilos. A limited amount: CLP 18.9 million. The tender closed on November 5, and the file records neither bidders nor an award.

And in education, three Local Public Education Services awarded school connectivity in October, each on its own: Santa Corina for CLP 369.7 million, Elqui for CLP 249.6 million covering 34 schools, and Aconcagua for CLP 145.7 million. Three different providers, three different scopes, to solve a very similar need.

I do not want to overstate what this proves. These are few cases. Each deserted tender can have a different reason: unattractive terms, short deadlines, low reference prices. And three separate purchases do not prove poor coordination.

But they do show something the announcements do not. Chile’s digital divide is no longer only about technology. It is about the capacity to buy it, contract it, and sustain it in places the market does not reach on its own.

Sources: four deserted municipal tenders; satellite phones in Coquimbo; school connectivity in three SLEP.

Satellite stopped being a niche

The other signal that keeps repeating is satellite. The Air Force awarded Starlink plans and Iridium cards for three Antarctic bases. The Army leases satellite kits to operate in Arauco. A hospital in Salamanca is on the same track. And on the regulatory side, Subtel granted AST SpaceMobile a 30-year S-band concession to connect phones directly to satellites, with a maximum of 24 months to start providing the service.

One detail seems especially interesting to me: in the public purchases that were awarded, the owner of the constellation did not win. Local providers did. That suggests that, in Chile at least, a good share of the satellite business is not in the network. It is in resale, installation, and support: in whoever shows up with the equipment, configures it, and answers when it fails.

Sources: satellite purchases by the FACh and the Army; AST SpaceMobile concession.

Infrastructure is also sovereignty

There is a third thread, less visible. The Navy signed a memorandum of understanding with Cirion, Gtd, and Telxius to coordinate the protection of submarine cables. All three have landing stations in Valparaíso, where a large share of Chile’s international connection is concentrated.

It is a cooperation framework, not an allocation of resources. Its real value will show up when there are joint exercises and measurable response times. But the fact that the Navy wants a seat at that table says a lot about how the way of looking at these networks is changing. They are no longer only an operators’ business. They are critical infrastructure.

Source: Navy, Cirion, Gtd, and Telxius.

Meanwhile, the market is reordering itself

And all of this is happening in a market that is moving. Telefónica and KKR put OnNet Fibra up for sale, the wholesale fiber network that passes 5.2 million homes. The deal could value the business at up to US$2 billion. What matters is not the price, but who buys. If an infrastructure fund comes in, the neutral model probably holds. If an operator with its own network comes in, the market can become more vertical.

In parallel, América Móvil notified the Chilean State of a dispute over what it considers favorable treatment of WOM in its 5G deployment commitments. If there is no agreement within 90 days, it can request international arbitration.

Sources: sale of OnNet Fibra; América Móvil and WOM.

My reading

I have spent years working in telecommunications, and one thing I learned is that networks rarely fail for lack of vision. They fail in execution.

Chile has a clear strategy and a very solid technical base. 5G is growing fast, fiber dominates, and the regulator is thinking about 6G and Antarctica. That is not nothing.

But the signals from these weeks show where the real friction is. A small municipality that cannot get anyone to sell it internet. A hospital that needs a satellite phone as backup and receives no bids. Public services that solve almost identical problems separately.

None of that shows up in a national plan. But those are the things that decide whether connectivity reaches the people who need it.

Chile’s next connectivity leap probably does not depend on a new network generation. It depends on public procurement, the wholesale market, and regulation working in the places where they do not work today.

What I will keep watching

I am going to follow four things. Whether the municipalities relaunch those tenders, and on what terms. Whether the Coquimbo satellite tender gets bidders or goes deserted. Who buys OnNet Fibra, and whether it keeps the neutral wholesale model. And whether the Antarctic Cable secures financing and partners, which is the real threshold.

Radar will keep reading these files. Often the most useful signal is not in the announcement. It is in the document that comes next.

Related reading:

• Google Is Connecting Chile to Asia
• Record investment, a convulsed telecom market
• The Invisible Work Behind the Internet

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✍️ Claudio from ViaMind

“Dare to imagine, create and transform.”

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