The world of work changed irreversibly in 2020. What the COVID-19 pandemic imposed out of necessity—working from home, signing contracts via video call, managing regulatory matters from another city or even another country—ended up becoming a permanent model. Remote work increased tenfold after the pandemic began and has stabilized at a level roughly five times higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Today, technical consulting, legal and regulatory advisory services, operational auditing, contract management, and specialized sales are routinely provided remotely and digitally in the world’s major markets. The relevant question for Venezuela is whether the country is in a position to participate in this dynamic at a time when its energy industry is being called upon to reawaken.
An ecosystem that grows around the oil industry
The reactivation of Venezuela’s oil industry is not limited to drills, wells, and barrels. Behind every project lies a complex chain of services: technical consulting, legal and regulatory advice, environmental management, financial auditing, and human capital development.
That is precisely the ecosystem Venezuela needs to activate. And that is where telecommunications cease to be a sector-specific issue and become a structural prerequisite for economic development.
The current situation: real progress, persistent gaps
The telecommunications landscape in Venezuela is one of ongoing development. Data from DataReportal indicates that in 2025, Venezuela had 22.5 million active mobile connections, equivalent to 79.1% of the population; however, only 17.5 million people have effective internet access, bringing the actual penetration rate to 61.6%.
The difference is significant: it implies that a substantial portion of those mobile connections is limited to voice and SMS, without data access. In a service ecosystem that relies on video calls, collaborative platforms, technical file transfers, and cloud-based document management, that gap is not merely statistical—it is operational.
While last year the Venezuelan government claimed that Venezuela had installed 233,289 kilometers of fiber-optic cable nationwide, independent academic studies paint a very different picture.
An analysis published in 2024 by Universidad Católica Andrés Bello asserts that 81.2% of Venezuelan households reported having no internet access, and 70.5% reported not having computers at home. The same study ranks Venezuela 138th out of 140 countries in average mobile speed, classified as the third slowest connection in the world. The gap between official rhetoric and academic evidence is no minor detail: it is, in itself, a sign of the magnitude of the challenge.
The challenge of connecting all regions of the country to the transmission grid persists, particularly in remote areas, where the economic feasibility of bringing connectivity to small towns remains the biggest obstacle. It is precisely the areas where energy activity is concentrated—the eastern part of the country, the production basins, and the Mining Arc—that have the greatest gaps in coverage and signal quality.
Because the logic of the remote services ecosystem is relentless: a technical consultant in Houston, a regulatory advisor in Madrid, or an auditing firm in Bogotá will decide whether to work with Venezuela—or not—based on whether they can operate as smoothly as they do in other markets. Latency, stability, bandwidth, and coverage in operational areas are not minor technicalities: they are the parameters that determine whether the business is viable or not.
The implications of this gap extend beyond the energy sector. A robust telecommunications infrastructure is also essential for telehealth—including advanced applications such as remote patient monitoring and remote surgical assistance—for virtual education, and for citizens’ full participation in an increasingly digital economy. In a country where hospital and educational infrastructure has also suffered decades of deterioration, connectivity is not merely an economic driver: it is a prerequisite for well-being and social cohesion.
This virtuous cycle requires that the telecommunications infrastructure be in place—or at least keep pace with demand, rather than lagging behind it.
How wide is that gap today, and what specific decisions could bridge it? That is one of the questions we have posed to one of the most qualified Venezuelan experts to answer it.
