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Suriname Telecoms Market Report

Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

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Last updated: 24 Jul 2024 Update History

Report Status: Current

Report Pages: 86

Suriname improves network capacity with Digicel’s Deep Blue One cable

Suriname is the smallest nation on the South American continent, with only about 632,000 inhabitants. A Dutch-speaking nation, it has close affinities with the Caribbean, and is a member of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM). The state-owned telco Telesur is also a member of CANTO, the regional association made up of operators, organisations, companies and individuals in the ICT sector. CANTO promotes collaborative efforts to create policies and legislation which facilitate the deployment of digital services and technologies around the Caribbean region and the Americas, aimed at supporting the development of digital economies and smart cities (among other matters).

Telesur is the only provider of fixed-line and fixed broadband services in Suriname. The country’s fixed-line infrastructure is reasonably reliable in the more populated coastal region, though poor in the interior. Telesur started building out a fibre network in Paramaribo 2013, and in 2019 it completed the rollout of the National Broadband Project (TNBP).

Fixed teledensity and broadband penetration are slightly lower than average for Latin America and the Caribbean, while mobile penetration is significantly above the regional average and much higher than would be expected given the country’s relatively low GDP per capita. This is due to the high proportion of Surinamese who have multiple mobile phones with different providers, thus pushing up penetration figures. However, there was some market adjustment in 2021 when the number of mobile subscribers increased by only 0.7%, largely due to consumers having responded to economic pressures which resulted from the pandemic. The mobile market supports only two players: Telesur (trading as TeleG), and Digicel (part of Digicel Group, a significant operator across the Caribbean). In early 2015 Digicel acquired the only other operator, Uniqa, which only had about 5,000 subscribers at the time. In January 2017 Digicel signed a deal to host the MVNO Transatel, which operates in a number of markets across the Caribbean and Latin America.

Key developments:

  • Telecom regulator condemns market entry of the Starlink service without the necessary permits and licence.
  • Digicel Group opens its Deep Blue One subsea cable.
  • Telesur completes the migration of all mobile and fixed-line customers to a digital BSS/OSS platform, enabling it to decommission its legacy systems.
  • Report update includes recent market developments, Telecom Maturity Index charts and analyses, ITU data updates for 2022.

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