Ecuador state telco sets national 4G target

Ecuadoran state telco CNT aims to provide national 4G coverage within the next two years, local paper El Telégrafo reported the company's marketing director, Alexander Gómez, as saying.

The carrier's 4G network is already operational in six cities and the firm recently launched LTE services for smartphones with plans starting from US$29.

CNT is planning to install a total of 400 mobile base stations to help meet its national 4G coverage target. That is in addition to the 1,361 HSPA+ base stations currently being set up, Gómez said.

CNT had 116 LTE base stations in place as of the end of April, according to telecom regulator Conatel statistics. This means that the company needs to install almost 300 more in the next two years to achieve its goal.

In total, CNT had 1,197 mobile base stations as of the end of April, considerably less than the 3,222 registered by Movistarand 4,895 by Claro at that time. However, the state telco has rapidly increased its coverage. It had 1,044 at the end of 2013 compared with 504 at the end of 2012.

CNT had 4,855 LTE subscribers, four months after launching the service, according to figures from telecom superintendency Supertel.

Meanwhile, private players Claro and Movistar – which control the majority of the mobile market – are still waiting to receive 4G spectrum from the government.