The Internet Frontier: How Bolivia Is Connecting from the Peaks to the Stars
TKSat-1, launched in 2013 as a $300 million geostationary satellite with China’s help, enabled rural internet, backhaul for mobile towers, and community telecenters with latency around 600 ms. Plans for Túpac Katari 2 with substantially higher throughput were discussed, but a second satellite had not materialized by 2025. In August 2024 Bolivia banned unlicensed Starlink terminals, yet by early 2025 an estimated 10,000 Starlink kits were in use on the gray market, often roaming from Peru, with about $50/month and $500 equipment. The El Alto national data center opened in February 2025, a $52 million Tier III facility owned by
