Did Plan Vive Digital expand broadband access in Colombia?

Colombia's Plan Vive Digital (2010–2014) committed approximately US$2.9 billion to expanding broadband infrastructure, with targets of quadrupling internet connections and extending fiber-optic networks to 700 municipalities. We use synthetic control methods to estimate the policy's effect on internet adoption and fixed broadband subscriptions. Comparing Colombia to a weighted combination of 15 similar countries over 2000–2020, we find that Colombia's broadband adoption trajectory tracks that of countries that made no comparable public investment. Plan Vive Digital produced no measurable adoption beyond what these countries achieved on their own (internet p = 0.86, fixed broadband p = 0.55). The null result survives exclusion of individual donor countries, alternative treatment year assumptions, changes in donor pool composition, and disaggregation of the post-treatment window into subperiods. The pattern is consistent with a growing literature that is skeptical whether large public IT investments translate to real adoption gains.