US OKs Venezuela Telecom Repairs. Investment Talks Open, Not Investment.

Two licenses issued the same day let U.S. companies sell equipment and negotiate investment with Venezuela's state telecom system, eight months after Maduro's removal and eight weeks after an earthquake that cost the sector an estimated five billion dollars. The sourced chain stops at the wholesale authorization; no source connects it yet to a household phone or internet bill.

On August 21, 2026, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued two general licenses covering Venezuela's telecommunications sector. A general license is a standing OFAC authorization: it lets a defined category of transaction proceed without each company applying for its own individual approval. General License 61 authorizes U.S. companies to supply equipment, software and services to install, repair, upgrade or operate telecommunications in Venezuela. General License 62 authorizes something narrower: negotiating and signing contingent contracts for new telecom investment, with performance of any such contract requiring a further, separate OFAC authorization before it can actually proceed.

Both licenses name Venezuela's telecom regulator CONATEL and the state carrier CANTV as counterparties; an accompanying FAQ confirms the state mobile carrier Movilnet is covered as well. None of the three is individually listed on OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals list. They are blocked instead as instrumentalities of the “Government of Venezuela” under Executive Order 13884, a broader legal category. The new licenses authorize specific, defined transactions with them. They do not remove that blocked status.

No Gold, No Russia, No Iran: The Fine Print

OFAC's text for GL 61 defines telecommunications broadly: data, telephone, internet connectivity, radio, television and news-wire services, “regardless of the medium of transmission, including transmission by satellite or through submarine cables.” Authorized transactions include laying and repairing submarine cables, interconnection and roaming agreements, capacity leases, and billing and cloud-software support.

Confirmed OFAC General License No. 61, 21 August 2026, read directly for this piece.

GL 61's text sets two conditions on any contract that relies on it: governing law has to be that of a U.S. state, with dispute resolution in the United States, the United Kingdom, France or Singapore, and the license carries a reporting condition, transaction details sent to a State Department sanctions inbox within 10 days of the first transaction and every 90 days after. The license text also notes it does not relieve anyone of separately complying with the Federal Communications Commission, the federal committee that screens foreign participation in U.S. telecom services, or the Commerce Department's export-control rules. Both licenses were signed by Bradley T. Smith, OFAC's director. GL 62 carries the same country exclusions as GL 61 and likewise does not unblock any already-blocked property.

A $5 Billion Earthquake, Then a License

The licenses land inside a fast sequence of events. U.S. forces captured President Nicolas Maduro on January 3, 2026 and removed him to the United States, where he was arraigned on drug-trafficking charges two days later. Delcy Rodriguez became acting president and was herself removed from OFAC's sanctions list on April 1, 2026. Since then OFAC has issued a rapid run of sector-specific licenses covering Venezuelan oil, gas, gold, minerals and aviation, each narrower than a blanket lifting of sanctions.

On June 24, 2026, two earthquakes, magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, struck north-central Venezuela 39 seconds apart. A United Nations damage assessment published July 6 put total direct physical damage at roughly $37 billion: about $24 billion in building damage and $13 billion in infrastructure damage. Telecommunications took the largest single loss inside that infrastructure category, about $5 billion, ahead of energy generation and roads. Venezuela's government reported the death toll had passed 4,300 by July 11, with 16,740 injured.

OFAC has not stated, in any document reviewed for this piece, a causal link between GL 61 or GL 62 and the earthquake's telecom damage. The timing, eight weeks after the UN's damage estimate, and the fact that telecom was the hardest-hit infrastructure category, sit alongside each other in the record. OFAC itself has not connected them.

The Chevron Warning: Licenses Can Be Pulled

The clearest precedent for how far this kind of authorization can go, and how easily it can be reversed, is Venezuela's oil sector. OFAC's original Chevron-focused General License 41, issued in November 2022, authorized only Chevron's existing joint ventures with no right to expand into new fields, and did not authorize paying taxes, royalties or dividends to Venezuela's government. A broader oil-sector license that followed, GL 44, was not renewed in that form: OFAC replaced it with a wind-down-only GL 44A in April 2024, ending the wider authorization. Sanctions-law trackers note that OFAC's Venezuela general licenses generally carry no fixed expiration date but can be amended, narrowed or revoked “at any time,” which one law firm's client alert describes as sanctions “snapping back into place.”

Starlink, a New Cable, and Venezuela's Aging Grid

CANTV holds the largest share of Venezuela's fixed-line and internet market, running substantially on aging copper infrastructure with a history of theft and long repair backlogs; it has begun a fiber-optic upgrade and sold minority equity stakes to help pay for it. In late July 2026, Venezuela's regulator CONATEL held working meetings with SpaceX's Starlink on regularizing satellite internet service in the country; reporting on those talks describes U.S. authorization for a company to operate as already in place, with the remaining obstacle being Venezuelan domestic paperwork rather than U.S. sanctions. Also in late July, the telecom firm Liberty Networks and CANTV announced a submarine cable project linking Venezuela to Curacao, intended to add international capacity and reduce latency.

Nothing Here Reaches a Venezuelan Phone Bill Yet

Every figure in this piece past General License 61 itself describes a wholesale or network-level change: a legal authorization to sell equipment, a damage estimate for infrastructure, a submarine cable's capacity. No source reviewed for this piece, OFAC, UN, wire service, or specialist telecom press, reports what GL 61 or GL 62 changes for what a Venezuelan household actually pays for phone or internet service, or how quickly a damaged connection gets restored. The step from “a legal barrier to trade is removed” to “a network gets repaired faster” is a mechanism, not a measurement: whether any company uses the licence, on what timeline, at what cost to a subscriber, is not something the sourced record answers yet.