Around six weeks after a major earthquake hit Haiti, which is still in its early recovery stages, another one took place in Chile during the weekend. We hope that the international community will unite to assist Chile, especially with its telecom infrastructure, which has proven to be a great allied in saving lives in Haiti. Luckily, Chile’s telecommunications infrastructure is much robust than Haiti’s and the Red Cross is already asking those who still have service to share it with others.
There is some good market news that emerged last week from the Latin American telecom market despite the fact that talking about “good news” this week is a hard endeavor. A report released by Pyramid Research last week indicated that the Colombian regulatory framework had become a catalyst for promoting competition. The consultancy group is predicting a telecommunications market recovery at the beginning of 2010. After a challenging 2009, Pyramid says that Colombian telecom market ranks fifth in Latin America measured by telecom revenues. According to analyst Cesar Jimenez, Colombia is one of the most competitive Latin American markets due a strong presence from regional players as well as local, yet aggressive, groups.
“Now, the telecommunications regulatory framework is undergoing a serious transformation towards the promotion of effective competition, of over 20 current regulatory projects, 10 deal directly with the competition,” Jimenez said. The analyst adds that in 2010, the regulatory environment will promote number portability, a 2.5 GHz spectrum auction and the implementation of specific antitrust regulation, among others.
In that same country ETB reported its fiscal results showing that the market stood still in 2009. The operator reported last week a 0.57% profit decrease in 2009. ETB earned 104.4 million, while earnings in 2008 stood at 105 million. The company’s revenue for 2009 fell by 3.1% year on year, totaling US$736 million. ETB telephony revenues declined 1.6% year on year, and within this category, the most beaten service was long distance, which plunged by 23.6%. Meanwhile, data and Internet revenues rose by 25.9%.
The Peruvian telecom market is also providing signs of recovery as the Peruvian government seeks advice from an investment bank to develop the terms of a fourth cellular license. It is worth recalling that last August, the government initiated the auction process to attract a fourth cellular operator to Peru unsuccessfully. Two companies pre-qualified: Americatel Peru and Hits Telecom, which due to the global financial situation later declared to be unable to finance their projects. Last December, the government stated its intention to find alternatives to start the action process again.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian pay television market reached 7.6 million subscribers in January, adding of 149,900 subscribers during the first month of 2010. The number of customers rose by 2% compared to December 2009, according to Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações (Anatel). According to estimates from the regulator, the pay television services reached about 25 million Brazilians, based on an average of 3.3 people per household. Cable TV dominates the market with 57.9% market share or 4.4 million subscribers, satellite service (DTH) accounts for 2.8 million subscribers or 37,4% market share. MMDS retains a 4.7% market share, with about 353,800 customers.
Operators of all sorts in Brazil are planning more investment and expansion plans in their agendas. Fixed phone and broadband services group Vivendi (GVT) announced the expansion of its operations to Fortaleza (Ceara state), João Pessoa and Campina Grande (state of Paraíba). The combined population of these three municipalities is 3.5 million people, said GVT. Network deployment started in December 2009 and it is expected to be completed during April. The combined investment to serve 30% of these cities will exceed US$50 million this year. The operator expects to capture about 110,000 telephone and broadband connections while creating 1,700 direct and indirect jobs during network deployment.
Brazil reached 175.6 million lines at the end of January. Mobile telephony penetration reached 91.3%. About 145 million users (82.6%) are prepaid, while about 30.5 million (17.4%) belong to postpaid plans. Vivo (Telefónica and Portugal Telecom) remains the market leader with 52.4 million customers and a market share of 29.87%, followed by Claro (America Móvil) with 44.8 million users and 25.52% of the market. TIM (Telecom Italia) remains in third place with 41.5 million lines and a 23.63% market share, while Brazilian operator Oi, with 36.2 million customers and 20.61% of the market remains as the fourth largest operators in the country.
Telefónica chairman in Brazil, Antonio Carlos Valente, reported last week that the company would invest about US$ 1.881 million in the country in 2010. Of the total, approximately US$1,236 million would be allocated to fix telephony, the expansion of broadband services and pay TV. The rest would be divided among other group companies, such as mobile operator Vivo (joint venture with Portugal Telecom), Terra and Atento.
The Ministry of Communications and Transport (SCT) denied last week an extension of MVS nine 2.5 GHz spectrum licenses. The regulator stated MVS had made no use of the spectrum licenses as no network was built. SCT added that due to recent technological changes, those licenses should be used for 3G and 4G mobile services to maximize its benefits for the Mexican market. MVS has already announced that SCT decision is appealing as it plans to deploy a WiMAX network if the contract is extended. MVS reminds that for many years there were not many options to deploy a wireless networks in the 2.5 GHZ band.
At the regional level NII Holdings (Nextel) is transforming itself by letting tech companies run their technology assets as the operator concentrates on services and costumer attention. NII selected HP Enterprise Services to manage its applications and services supporting its infrastructure for its Latin America subsidiaries. The agreement will enable NII to standardize their processes and increase user satisfaction, the group said in a statement. Steve Dussek, NII Holdings CEO, stated: “Our alliance with HP is a key component in our efforts to improve IT systems that support all the services we provide to our customers and improve the efficiency of our operations.” The agreement with HP comes days after the outsourcing agreement signed with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for network management.
Heading north, Panama keeps advancing on its number portability agenda. The National Authority of Public Services (ASEP) began the fixed and mobile number portability process approval. The regulator held a briefing last week involving the telecommunications operators established in the country and 10 companies interested in the technical tender for the implementation of the number portability system. Panama will have an All Call Query number portability system, the regulator said.
Remember to donate via SMS to help Chile recover from its natural disaster!
Until next week,
QuovisMedia Team