Introducing the World Wide Web in Guatemala

All information on the Web is accessible worldwide. Therefore, it does not matter where the information is located. Gerencia's pages, for example, reside on a server in the United States, but are still accessible from Guatemala and any other country.

To offer a good service, it is important to have a high speed connection from your server to the net. This is difficult in Guatemala: there are no fiber optic links to any other countries, and the satellite links are slow and extremely expensive, starting at US$8,000 per month for only 64Kbps.

Still, a few Guatemalan companies already serve as Internet service providers and presence providers (please see my list here.) We hope that in the future, many companies will be able to enter the Internet service business. This will depend very much on the willingness of Guatel (the Guatemalan state-owned PTT) in allowing free competition in telecommunications services.