Robust Growth Ahead for CALA Telecoms, Triggering More M&A
August 31st, 2010Data from TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Insight Research Service project that telecom service revenue in Latin America and the Caribbean will grow from $122 billion in 2009 to $143 billion in 2014, led by the wireless sector. That signals a good growth opportunity for carriers in the region, as well as those looking to buy stakes in existing operators.
Telecom revenue in Brazil, Latin America’s largest market, will top $55 billion in 2014, followed by Mexico, with $25 billion, and Venezuela, at $13 billion. Brazil is growing revenue at 39 percent and Mexico at 17 percent. Venezuela is a distant third, at 9 percent.
Total mobile revenues are projected to grow just over 4 percent annually, while revenues from fixed-line (broadband and voice) services will grow just over 2 percent annually. Revenues will be driven by wireless and broadband subscriber annual …
Global ICT Firms Urge Obama to Remove the Cuba Embargo
August 31st, 2010Nokia Oyj, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are urging the U.S. government to ease rules that keep them from operating in Cuba even after President Barack Obama loosened telecommunications regulations last year to promote democracy on the communist island.
Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile-phone maker, is urging the U.S. to ease its 47-year-old trade embargo so it can sell handsets to Cuba. AT&T and Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless providers, urged regulators to make it easier for U.S. companies to directly connect calls to and from Cuba.
The companies’ pleas come after Obama said in April 2009 that greater contact with the outside world would reduce Cubans’ dependency on President Raul Castro’s regime. Still, other regulations prevent companies with U.S. operations from entering the market, according to a July report by the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, which advocates for an open economy.
“We don’t understand why the regulations stopped where they did,” …
Latin America ICT: Ranking the Top Five Telecom Markets
August 18th, 2010Chile Claims Top Spot Based on Advanced Infrastructure
By Tarun George
Over the next five years, LatAm wireless network traffic is slated to rise at a CAGR of 86% – pretty significant compared to the 61% CAGR average for emerging markets as a whole. And yet Latin America is still a relatively small telecom services market. Despite advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), there are large discrepancies between countries – some with modernized and liberal telecom networks, and others with closed and politicized systems in place. If you’re a prospective sourcing client, those discrepancies can make or break your operation.
To clear the air, we decided to leverage some expert opinion and develop our 2010 Ranking of the Top Five Telecom-Ready Sourcing Destinations in Latin America.
Nicaragua Forecasted to Have Fast Growing Mobile Market
July 21st, 2010PRNewswire: Despite the country’s political instability and widespread poverty, Nicaragua’s mobile penetration will top 80 percent by 2015 from 53.9 percent in 2010, fueled by expansion of prepaid subscriptions and urban mobile broadband connections, according to a new report from Pyramid Research (www.pyr.com).
Nicaragua: Prepaid Services to Drive Mobile Growth in a Challenging Market offers a precise profile of the country’s telecommunications, media, and technology sectors based on proprietary data from our research in the market. It provides detailed competitive analysis of both the fixed and mobile sectors, tracks the market shares of technologies and services, and monitors the introduction and spread of new technologies. Download an excerpt of this report here: http://www.pyr.com/downloads.htm?id=18&sc=PRN072010_CIRNIC.
Nicaragua is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.5 percent over the next five years to advance from $478 million for 2010 to $655 million in 2015, well ahead of the 3.7 percent average …
Cuba’s Domestic ICT Industry Still in the Slow Lane
June 21st, 2010Cubans’ ability to communicate with one another and the world remained well below the norm for the Caribbean and Latin America in 2009, according to a government report released this week.
Despite the legalization of mobile phones in 2008 there were just 1.8 million phone lines in the country, or 15.5 lines for every 100 inhabitants, which was the lowest in the region, according to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union.
Some 800,000 of the phones were mobiles.
Computers numbered 700,000 or 62 per 1,000 residents, compared with more than 160 per thousand residents in the region, and many were in government offices, health and education facilities.
There is no broadband in Cuba and the relatively few Internet users in the country suffer through agonizingly long waits to open an e-mail, let alone view a photo or video. This also hampers government and business operations.
Cuba blames the United States embargo, saying …
Panama has made a leap ahead of other Central American countries in terms of the level of broadband competition and speed of access, helped in part by a utilities regulator – Asep – that has strived to introduce policies that meet market demands, Elias Vicente, senior analyst with Signals Telecoms Consulting, told BNamericas.
Panama has had fixed-line number portability in place for years and is due to introduce mobile line number portability before year-end, which will provide an additional stimulus for competitors to improve their service offerings to retain customers.
According to the analyst, Panama is head and shoulders above its neighbors with operators Cable & Wireless (C&W) and Cable Onda both offering speeds of over 5Mbps, while the majority of Central American operators do not offer speeds over 2Mbps.
Panamanian operators are also becoming competitive in Central America in packaging of services.
C&W’s introduction of a pay-TV service called +TV Digital …
SPECIAL REPORT: Jamaica’s ICT Runs Smoothly But Some Call Centers Face Attendance Gaps
June 4th, 2010BY NEARSHORE AMERICAS STAFF
While Jamaica’s tourism industry has taken a US$350 million hit in losses because of recent unrest, the country is reporting that its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector remains robust in spite of the violent conflicts.
“Despite the recent unrest in sections of Kingston, companies in the information and communications technology sector are indicating that they have not sustained major disruptions and are already experiencing the return of normal operation levels in their businesses,” said a representative from Jamaica Promotions (JAMPRO), the government agency with responsibility for the sector.
Last week, part’s of the country’s capital – West Kingston descended into unrest after Prime Minister Bruce Golding gave instruction for extradition of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, an “area don” in Tivoli Gardens, a community in West Kingston. Coke is wanted by the United States on allegations of drug trafficking and gun running.
But residents from Tivoli Gardens barricaded all …
Telefonica Brazil Outsources Network Management to Ericcson
May 18th, 2010Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) has further cemented its position as the world’s leading network managed services provider by landing a three-year deal with Telefónica Brazil (also known as Telesp), part of Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF)’s Latin American empire.
The value of the deal is undisclosed, although around 100 staff will be moving over from Telefónica Brazil, a fixed-line service provider with about 2.8 million DSL customers, to Ericsson.
Under the terms of the deal, Ericsson is to operate Telefónica Brazil’s network operations center in São Paulo and manage the core, transmission, and ADSL networks. It follows a deal signed between Ericsson and the operator in 2008 to maintain the carrier’s new fiber network in São Paulo.
The deal is worth noting, not only because it’s another victory for the Swedish giant ahead of its main managed services rivals, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) …
Costa Rica’s telecommunications regulator has published a preliminary request for bids to open the Central American country’s cell-phone market to private companies, heralding the end of a 47-year state monopoly.
The country’s regulator, known as SUTEL, yesterday released a draft of bidding rules on its website for three mobile spectrum licenses after the Comptroller’s Office dropped a conflicts of interest probe that delayed bidding by three months, said SUTEL President George Miley.
SUTEL hopes to award concessions as early as September, Miley said in a telephone interview from San Jose. He expects bidding comparable to recent concessions in Honduras and Panama that exceeded $80 million.
Companies interested in bidding include Irish-owned mobile operator Digicel Group Ltd., America Movil, Latin America’s largest wireless-phone carrier, …
Latin America’s telecom market, much like its landscape, is a diverse tapestry of everything from traditional wireline voice services to next generation networks (NGNs) consisting of fiber and DOCSIS-based broadband, VoIP and 3G wireless.
But as Jose Otero, President of Signals Consulting explains, Latin American service providers face a number of regulatory challenges in obtaining their NGN goals.
“The main obstacle to the expansion of NGN in the region is outdated regulatory constraints,” he said. “This slows investment from telecom operators throughout the region.”
Despite the regulatory challenges, Latin American incumbent and competitive service providers alike are pursuing some form of Next Generation Network (NGN) strategy that includes a mix of Fiber to the Home (FTTH), Fiber to the Node (FTTN) and DOCSIS 3.0-based cable broadband networks.
The FierceTelecom team takes up these issues in our latest eBook: Latin America’s Next Generation Networks.
Two Latin American countries take …
