By Maira Magro
The government announced it revoked the license of Fibertel, an internet service provider owned by Grupo Clarín, the parent company of Clarín newspaper, Bloomberg reports. “Fibertel doesn’t exist anymore,” said Planning Minister Julio De Vido.
This is yet another demonstration of the bad blood between the government and Argentina’s largest media company.
According to Dow Jones and Reuters, Fibertel is one of the top internet companies in the country and the largest provider of high-speed access, with more than one million subscribers. The government says those users will have 90 days to find a new ISP.
According to The Financial Times, the company was operating illegally due to an unapproved merger with the Argentine telecom company CableVisión.
CableVisión called the action “totalitarian” and “illegal and arbitrary” and said it would appeal, Bloomberg adds.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
