Chile’s courts have once again pushed the country’s telecommunications regulator to tighten its approach to illegal online betting. In a recent ruling, the Second Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications to submit a detailed technical report explaining how internet service providers in Chile are implementing court‑ordered blocks on online betting platforms that have been declared illegal.
This order forms part of a protection action that has been running for nearly two years and that the Supreme Court recently revived when it overturned an earlier appeals‑court decision which had treated the existing blocking measures adopted by the six main internet service providers as sufficient.
The complainant is Lotería de Concepción, one of Chile’s two state‑licensed lottery operators, which has spent close to two years seeking effective enforcement against unlicensed online betting platforms. The defendants are the six dominant ISPs — Claro, Entel, GTD, Movistar, WOM and VTR — together with the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications in its role as the technical authority responsible for ensuring compliance with judicial blocking orders.
The head of the Undersecretariat, Romina Garrido, has informed the court that her office is working with the six providers on a protocol based on Server Name Indication (SNI) blocking. This technique is intended to help providers identify and block mirror sites that illegal operators can deploy rapidly after enforcement action is taken against a primary domain. Garrido has also acknowledged the strict limits that Chilean privacy and telecommunications law impose on the inspection of communications content, and has presented SNI‑based techniques as among the least intrusive tools available to the regulator.
These enforcement debates are unfolding as Chile moves closer than ever to enacting a long‑discussed online gambling framework. The executive has granted the highest legislative urgency to Bill 14838‑03, which seeks to regulate online betting platforms and is currently in its second constitutional stage of debate in the Senate. The proposal was first introduced in March 2022 under the Piñera administration and was subsequently retained and driven forward by the Boric government through repeated urgency motions.
Under Bill 14838‑03, operators would be required to obtain a general operating licence and incorporate in Chile as closed corporations with an exclusive corporate purpose focused on gambling operations. The existing Superintendency of Gaming Casinos would be transformed into the Superintendency of Casinos, Betting and Games of Chance, with powers to grant licences, supervise technical and regulatory compliance, impose sanctions and access platforms remotely in real time to monitor bets, payments and associated financial flows.
The post Santiago Court of Appeals orders Chile’s telecommunications regulator to detail ISP-blocking of illegal betting sites appeared first on G3 Newswire.
Chile’s courts have once again pushed the country’s telecommunications regulator to tighten its approach to illegal online betting. In a recent ruling, the Second Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals ordered the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications to submit a detailed technical report explaining how internet service providers in Chile are implementing court‑ordered blocks on online…
The post Santiago Court of Appeals orders Chile’s telecommunications regulator to detail ISP-blocking of illegal betting sites appeared first on G3 Newswire.