Keynote Presentation: Lessons in Digital Resilience: Multistakeholder Response and Connectivity Recovery in Venezuela Following the 2026 Earthquakes#

Alejandra Stolk Ganteaume (Internet Society Venezuela; Head of Networks and Connectivity, Universidad de Los Andes)

• Why: A postmortem of physical-layer, national-scale infrastructure failure and recovery — exactly the class of hard-won lesson operator programs exist to surface.
• What: The 24 June 2026 earthquakes (a holiday, coinciding with a World Cup match at 18:00; alert at 18:04:31) produced simultaneous physical shear exceeding theoretical redundancy models for La Guaira's coastal infrastructure; NASA estimated 800+ collapsed buildings. Digitel's Direct-to-Device satellite roaming went from zero usage to peak within 5 days (Ookla measurements, 24 Jun–5 Jul). Around 77 emergency community networks were deployed by ISOC Venezuela and partners across isolated, rural, health, and education sites; the SAC submarine cable was cut and repaired; ISPs physically rescued fiber to reconnect communities.
• How: The architectural lessons: deploy CDN nodes directly at the local IXP (nap.ve) to keep traffic in-country and avoid tromboning via Miami; treat decentralized switching as the resilience model; and coordinate in three layers — institutional (regulator, universities, ISOC, LACNIC), field (UN agencies, NGOs, community leaders), and specialized (TSF, satellite providers).
• Where applicable: Venezuela-specific event, but the design lessons (IXP-localized traffic, edge caching, D2D as an emergency tier, converting emergency networks into self-sustaining community networks) transfer to resilience planning anywhere. Next step proposed: a regional technical emergency group for digital resilience.