Synopsis
Mobile penetration in Venezuela is about 14% below average for South America. The mobile market is recovering from the downturn it took during Venezuela’s economic recession, but estimated growth is small compared with previous years.
Despite the slump in subscriber growth, the volume of data traffic has been increasing exponentially. Spurred by the huge popularity of social networks in Venezuela, the country has experienced an unanticipated surge in the demand for 3G and smartphones. Indeed, Venezuela is the number one country in Latin America for Blackberry handsets.
Three major players operate in the Venezuelan mobile market: Movilnet, the market leader and mobile subsidiary of state-owned CANTV; Movistar, the Venezuelan unit of Spain’s Telefónica; and Digitel, a locally owned private company.
Accompanied by key market statistics and analyses, this report provides an overview of Venezuela’s mobile market and a brief profile of all mobile operators. It also contains scenario forecasts for the years 2015 and 2020.
Key developments:
Mobile operators are having to invest in their networks, which suffer from severe congestion; Digitel, Movistar, and MovilMax (a WiMAX provider) plan to deploy 4G/LTE networks in 2013/2014; about one third of Venezuela’s mobile subscribers still use CDMA technology; Venezuela has the region’s highest mobile ARPU, although the US$ equivalent has been eroded by currency depreciations.
Companies covered in this report include:
Movilnet, Movistar, Digitel, MovilMax, Tesacom.
