Analyst: WCDMA/UMTS to be widespread in 2008

Latin American mobile operators will focus during 2007 on offering value added services through 3G technology, which should become widespread in 2008, Romina Aducci, telecom services director for Latin America at tech consultancy IDC, told BNamericas. Aducci expects 3G standards based on WCDMA/UMTS technology to reach significant penetration by 2008. Currently quite a few Latin American operators have EDGE technology, which is known as a 2.5G standard. Aducci believes that the levels of speed and quality EDGE offers is currently sufficient for the Latin American market considering the level of demand from mid-range consumers and the purchasing power in the region. "In theory EDGE is 2.5G but as long as the provider has the platform to support a vast number of users transmitting mobile broadband and multimedia, we can talk about [introducing] a 3G platform," Aducci said. According to the analyst, Latin America usually follows trends from Europe in terms of mobile telephony and they are using more WCDMA/UMTS 3G standards, based on CDMA, than GSM 3G technology standards, such as HSDPA. GSM is the most widely used mobile telephony technology used in Latin America. "I believe we are still far away from that. I believe in 2007 we will see EDGE technologies in use while the others will be deployed in 2008," she added. IDC believes growth in the Latin American telecommunications market will be driven by an increase in data rather than voice traffic, particularly through VoIP, and mobile broadband, which is expected to increase revenues for Latin American mobile operators by 36% in 2007 compared to 2006. Aducci was not able to provide market value for each segment, since IDC is expected to release its 2007 projections for the telecoms market in January. "During 2007, service providers will focus on fixed-mobile convergence, especially fixed line operators who will deploy more [next generation networks] NGN and [IP multimedia subsystem] IMS networks so they are in a better position to offer convergent services," Aducci said. The analyst also estimates that operators will focus on the triple play and IPTV segments, which traditionally have been dominated by cable operators. Commenting on growth by countries, Aducci said Argentina and Brazil will record the largest increase in investment in telecommunications in general in Latin American, mostly because their operators have been slower to invest in new telecoms technology than many other countries. "In Brazil, operators will invest on strong migration to IP and convergent networks, while the Argentine broadband market is growing at really impressive rates," she added.