2008 Latin America - Internet Broadband and Convergence Statistics (tables only)

Internet

Internet user penetration in Central America and the Caribbean stands at roughly 18%, only just over a quarter of what it is in the USA and Canada. In South America, about 25% of the population uses the Internet. Challenges to Internet growth include poor fixed-line infrastructure, low PC penetration, and widespread poverty. On the positive side, the broadband market has been growing steadily in most countries, and there is considerable room for expansion. Although the situation varies considerably from country to country, the region as a whole is a fertile ground for broadband investment. WiMAX and triple play are becoming increasingly popular.

Broadband

At the end of 2007, broadband subscribers in Latin America had grown to 19.4 million, a huge increase compared with 2.7 million in 2003. Nevertheless, in terms of penetration rate, the number of broadband lines per 100 inhabitants was only 3.4, considerably less than the world’s estimated 5.9 lines.

The poor uptake of broadband in the region can be attributed to several factors, the main one being the high prices charged by providers, which in many countries have a virtual monopoly in their areas of operation. Other factors include low PC penetration, insufficient fixed-line infrastructure, highly unequal income distribution, a lack of economies of scale, and regulatory hurdles.

Convergence

Convergence offers promising prospects in Latin America, a continent with about 570 million people, a soaring broadband sector, low teledensity, relatively high TV penetration, and a growing VoIP market. VoIP has gained huge popularity in most countries throughout the region since it dramatically cuts the costs of long-distance calling. It has been combined with broadband services by a number of operators but, in a few markets, especially those that are not privatised and/or liberalised, governments have regulated VoIP or prohibited it altogether in an attempt to protect the incumbent.

This report provides 180 statistical tables relating to Internet and broadband markets of 26 Latin American countries, and is extracted from the full annual market reports. For a full description, commentary, analysis and forecasting, see the original reports.

Notes on scenario forecasts

• Throughout the report, BuddeComm provides a number of scenario forecasts. The following notes provide some background to our scenario forecasting methodology:
• This report includes what we term scenario forecasts. By describing long-range scenarios we identify a band within which we expect market growth to occur. The associated text describes what we see as the most likely growth trend within this band.
• The projections shown in the tables in this report are based on our own historical information, as well as on telecommunication sector statistics from official and non-official, national and international sources. We assume a possible deviation of 15-20% around this data.
• All statistics for GDP, revenue, etc are shown in US$, in order to maintain consistency within and between markets. At the same time we acknowledge that this can introduce some irregularities.

Data in this report is the latest available at the time of preparation and may not be for the current year.