Network Neutrality Policies in the 5G South American Market

The implementation of 5G is in process in South America and promises significant innovations, enabling a wide range of services and new business models. This new generation of mobile networks is designed to offer low latency, high speed, and reliability, as well as the ability to create logical network slices to provide differentiated packet treatment according to service requirements. However, these differentiation practices could violate the strict principle of network neutrality, which is present in some South American laws, and thus conflict with the deployment of new 5G services. This article analyzes the potential effect of network neutrality policies on the new 5G services in four countries. The results reveal that a flexible interpretation of network neutrality should accommodate virtualization, network slicing, and other new innovative services in 5G. At the same time, a strict application could restrict innovation in services and investment in South America.