Puerto Rico Telecommunications Regulatory Board President Sandra Torres on Wednesday blasted the Legislature for ransacking the agency’s finances earlier this year, when it withdrew $10 million from a self-generated fund to balance the budget. The decision, she said, left the agency’s finances in a “precarious state.”
New research unveiled Wednesday by Connect Puerto Rico shows that nearly 85 percent of Puerto Rico households have access to fixed broadband at advertised speeds of at least 3 Mbps download/768 Kbps upload, up from 57 percent one year ago. This represents significant network expansion across the island.
Two years after scrubbing out about 166,000 Puerto Rico residents who were misusing phone subsidy benefits through the “Lifeline” program, the Telecommunications Regulatory Board has asked the Federal Communications Commission to allow it to opt-out of the stateside database to continue doing the job on its own.