Ecuador Living

How would you like to be able to invest roughly $50,000 to $60,000 or maybe less in a business in Ecuador that will likely give you a growing residual income for years into the future?

I am always being asked how you can make money in Ecuador, what can you do? My answer is always the same – you must start a business of some kind. Trying to compete against competent low wage workers is not the best way forward – I can guarantee that. I did no more than survive for three years teaching English in Quito. It was fun, it was interesting, stimulating and challenging. But not financially rewarding.

As Gary has explained, one very viable way to generate substantial earnings is to start an import export business, which is precisely why we offer our import export expeditions.
http://www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-import-and-export-tour

Other possibilities are to open a restaurant or small hotel – many have done this very successfully. But for something completely different read on below to see an opportunity concerning technology.

After just spending two days without internet at Meson de las Flores after a short duration power outage caused all the modems and routers to lose their settings, I’ve been scratching my head wondering how broadband internet could be better and faster in Cotacachi.

Of course, once we are used to having something we take it for granted - human nature I suppose, but I never forget that it’s something of an achievement that we can live here in the Andean mountain valleys and yet we’re connected by broadband to all corners of the globe. If I had a stock portfolio, and I’m glad I don’t as of today’s writing, I could be subscribed to a data service and get almost instantaneous ‘live’ data to trade my portfolio.

At Meson de las Flores we used to receive broadband from a company that uses microwave dishes to bounce the signals around the mountains until they reached Quito and the global data cable network. The only problem was that up at 13,000 feet on mount Cotacachi the dish they used was often buffeted by high winds and in some way failed to operate. I was never sure if it was inadequate equipment or just a bad location.

Needless to say there were frequent outages and so when DSL finally arrived in Cotacachi about a year ago I was front of the line to receive that service in El Meson. It has been a real blessing, trouble free and reliable for a year now, until last Wednesday.

Even so the tecs from the phone company came out the following day to fix the dsl line and then I needed to wait another day for someone to come and figure the wireless inside the hotel – not such an easy job for the amateur as we have three routers, two password protected networks and a voip phone that runs off a separate router (free internet and international calls for all guests at El Meson).

But while working in the nearby super-modern internet café, I was talking to the owner and he told me his brother is now offering a service using internet delivered by microwave dishes. The difference being that this new company has three dishes within the village so the reliability is much more assured.

In fact one of our new ex-pat residents is sitting pretty in his condo in Primavera (still priced competitively by the way at roughly $50,000 for a 2/3 bedroom with great mountain views) yet he tells me the speed is slow, ok for browsing the web and emailing, and that he pays $35/month.

I went back to the owner at the internet café again and asked him how he says you can have any bandwidth you want. The issue is price. You do pay more down in Ecuador for broadband and to get the really fast speeds that many of us are accustomed to at home now, you’d really need to pay quite a hefty monthly fee.

I think we have all heard the phrase ‘where there is a problem there’s an opportunity’.

I’d heard that there was cable tv in Cotacachi so my thinking went along the lines of “if there’s a cable network here why can’t they run internet along the cable?”

I found the owner of the local cable tv network unloading supplies from the back of his pickup as I arrived at his office. He has the whole of Cotacachi cabled and charges $13 a month for his clients to receive 22 channels. I asked about the internet and he wistfully shook his head.

He’s aware of the opportunity but bringing internet through the cables would require another type of cabling. The cable costs about $3,000 for a 400 meter roll. He estimates the investment might be $50-60,000 but he doesn’t have that money. I asked if he would consider a partner or joint equity scheme and after stroking his chin and giving the matter some thought he said he would.

Do you remember the time when we all accepted dial-up speeds? This is where Cotacachi is at right now. I can’t cycle down the street without finding another internet café open. Yet it’s an inconvenience to work in an internet café for any length of time. High on the Christmas wish list of many Ecuadorians is a home computer .. and once they have that they want a fast internet connection.

And then we have the expats arriving in ever greater numbers. Doing a quick mental calculation my guesstimate is that some 200 homes are either built, being built or planning to be built. Specifically for foreigners, that’s you and me, resettling here. Nearly all of us want a fast internet connection.

Luis, the cable tv operator tells me that the monthly charge for cable internet would be about $50-60 a month – which would totally undermine the current competition. So there you have it – a potential partnership with a successful Ecuadorian business man who needs a partner/investor to move forward to tap a growing demand right here in Cotacachi.

If technology is not your bag and you enjoy searching for bargains, could see yourself sourcing new products (otherwise known as being a super shopper) and traveling as much as you’d like and deducting all your expenses as a tax write-off then you will probably want to read about our last import export expedition this year http://www.garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-import-and-export-tour

Signing off over my now wonderfully stable DSL connection – Steve Marchant