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Good practice Imported

CRC's Convergent Sandbox — Colombia Authorises Its First AI-in-Telecoms Experiment

Colombia · Bogotá · See the Colombia profile · See the Bogotá profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 14% 80/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Colombia's telecom regulator CRC ran a full regulatory-sandbox funnel — 8 proposals from 6 companies, 5 rejected, 2 advanced — and authorised Tigo's conversational-AI customer-service pilot for a 12-month real-world experiment starting June 2026.

8
Proposals received (June 2025)
5
Proposals rejected (September 2025)
2
Proposals advanced (September 2025)
1
Proposals authorised for real-world experimentation (March 2026)

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (CRC)
Period
2025–2027 (call 2025, experimentation June 2026–June 2027)
Keywords
telecommunications regulation, AI compliance, consumer protection

Context

The Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (CRC), Colombia's telecom, postal and audiovisual regulator, launched its first 'Sandbox Regulatorio Convergente' call in 2025, inviting operators to test AI and other emerging-technology solutions for customer service under supervised regulatory relief.

Activities

CRC published dated results at every stage: 8 proposals from 6 proponents were received (June 2025); 5 were rejected for not meeting minimum requirements and 2 advanced - ConTIGO Digital, by Colombia Movil/UNE EPM Telecomunicaciones (Tigo), using conversational AI, and Customer 100% Digital, by Partners Telecom Colombia, using generative AI (September 2025); only ConTIGO Digital accredited full regulatory compliance and was authorised to begin a 12-month real-world experiment starting 18 June 2026 (March 2026). The pilot integrates conversational AI into Tigo's phone customer-service channels to cut wait times and simplify user interactions.

Results

It stands out as one of the few Latin American cases where a regulator has published a complete, dated selection funnel with explicit rejection reasons rather than a bare announcement.

Conclusions

Only one of the eight original proposals survived to authorised experimentation, illustrating how selective the sandbox is, and outcome data from the 12-month pilot itself is not yet available as of August 2026.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
CRC regulatory sandbox evaluation team

Conditions for success

  • Published minimum requirements for entry
  • A staged evaluation with a correction period before final rejection
  • Formal compliance accreditation required before real-world testing begins

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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