Entel (Bolivia)

Entel S.A., short for Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, is a big telecommunications company in Bolivia. It is owned by the Bolivian government and has its main office in La Paz. Entel was started a long time ago, on December 22, 1965, by a law called Decree N° 7441. It began as a company that shared ownership, but in 1966 it changed to a public company, meaning the government oversaw it.

For a while, a foreign company called STET, which later became Telecom Italia, owned half of Entel and helped manage it. This happened on November 27, 1995. During this time, Entel had special rights to be the only company providing long-distance phone services for six years.

In 2008, Bolivia took full control of Entel again through a Supreme Decree. This meant the country owned most of the company and promised to keep workers’ jobs safe and honor all contracts. Entel also changed from being a private company to one that mixed government and public ownership, although this full change did not happen by 2021.

One big moment for Entel was in December 2013 when Bolivia’s first telecommunications satellite, called the Túpac Katari 1, was launched. This helped improve phone and internet service across the country. Entel also expanded outside Bolivia, planning to enter the Peruvian market in 2017 and investing in new technologies like a fiber-optic network in 2019 and testing 5G technology in Santa Cruz de la Sierra the same year with help from Huawei. By September 2020, Entel connected its fast fiber network to the world’s internet.

Sponsorship

As of 2021, Entel was the official jersey sponsor of Bolivia's national basketball team.