Publication Overview

This report provides 186 statistical tables for the mobile communications and mobile data activities, both on a regional and national level, for the major 26 South American and Caribbean countries

Researcher:- Lucia Bibolini, Lawrence Baker

Current publication date:- May 2009 (8^th Edition)

Next publication date:- August 2010

Executive Summary

Mobile penetration in Latin America and the Caribbean was approximately 80% in early 2009, well above the world average which was about 58%. With 458 million people owning a mobile phone in early 2009, Latin America and the Caribbean together hold approximately 12% of the world’s 3.97 billion mobile subscribers. Several countries, including Argentina, Jamaica, Uruguay, and Venezuela have passed the 100% penetration threshold. The region is becoming fertile soil for 3G W-CDMA services, following substantial increases in coverage and in subscriber numbers during 2008. In early 2009, there were about 5 million 3G subscribers throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

There are vast differences in mobile development throughout the region. Apart from some first-world Caribbean island nations, the highest mobile penetration rates in early 2009 could be found in Jamaica (115%), Argentina (110%), Uruguay (109%), and Venezuela (101%). By contrast, penetration was much lower in Bolivia (48%), Costa Rica (48%), and Nicaragua (52%). Cuba, the country with the region’s lowest mobile penetration, stagnated at 2.9%. Penetration in Haiti, the second lowest country, shot up from a 4.8% at end-2005 to 41% at end-2008 thanks to the launch of low-priced GSM services by Caribbean mobile giant Digicel, which entered the Haitian market in May 2006.

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

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.