Synopsis
While Latin America’s fixed lines stagnate at 17% teledensity, mobile subscribers have overtaken their fixed-line counterparts in every country except Cuba. Paraguay leads the trend, with ten mobile phones for every fixed line in service. By early 2007, mobile penetration had surpassed the 50% milestone, but growth was beginning to slow. Broadband grew at the annual rate of around 54% in 2006, however broadband penetration at end-2006 was only 2.5%. Some countries are leapfrogging into new applications such as VoIP, WiMAX, and triple play, while governments struggle to bridge the digital divide and find a solution to the region’s inadequate rural telephony. Telecom infrastructure varies from nonexistent to rudimentary and from adequate to well advanced in some major cities.
