Synopsis
While Latin America’s fixed lines stagnate at 18% teledensity, mobile subscribers have overtaken their fixed-line counterparts in every country except Cuba. Paraguay leads the trend, with twelve mobile phones for every fixed line in service. Mobile penetration in Latin America and the Caribbean was over 66% in early 2008, well above the world average, which was around 46%. Broadband grew at an annual rate of around 40% in 2007, but broadband penetration at year-end was only 3.4%, considerably less than the global average of 5.9%. 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. Accompanied by market statistics, this report gives an overview of major developments in the Latin American telecoms market in 2007 and early 2008.
