Brasil aprova 2,5 milhões de acessos LTE

Posted on 22 May 2014 by Roberta Prescott.

Brazilian mobile market ended April with almost 2.5 million LTE accesses. Although the total LTE base is still relatively small (only 0.91% of total accesses), LTE use has been increasing, with record growth last month. Led by Claro, which added 177,000 new LTE accesses in April, the 4G market grew 16.71% compared to March. Vivo added 114,800; TIM added 69,700 and Oi, 28,100. The total mobile base reached 273.6 million, dominated by prepaid customers (211.63 million or 77.35%) and GSM, which represents 53.49% of the total.

Technology evolution in Brazil

	January	February	March	April
GSM	157,558,379	154,033,719	150,479,277	146,343,016
WCDMA	97,839,346	101,407.992	105,402,214	109,054,231
M2M	8,378,402	8,482,281	8,668,772	8,823,492
Broadband data accesses	6,990,298	6,957,870	6,936,963	6,866,253
LTE	1,566,362	1,822,026	2,077,647	2,494,324
CDMA	20,454	19,375	18,603	17,651

Ecuador also released its telecommunications numbers. The total Internet service penetration rate jumped from 6% in 2006 to 66% in December 2013, totaling nearly 4.9 million for both fixed and mobile Internet connections. As for mobile phone accesses, the penetration rate increased from 63.2% in 2006 to 111.2% by the end of December 2013, with a total of 17.5 million lines. 

700 MHz auctions in Peru and Brazil—Peru’s minister of communications and transport said thatthe spectrum auction for the 700 MHz frequency band will occur this year. It will complement last’s year AWS auction. The goal is to reach 234 municipalities within four years.

• In Brazil, there’s ongoing discussion over whether LTE will interfere with TV broadcasting services on the 700 MHz band. Brazil’s Society of Television Engineering (SET) voiced concerns that interference between LTE and DTT could cause disruption in programming, such as frozen images or blank screens.

Spectrum return—After approval of the merger between Colombian state telco UNE and Millicom’s Colombian unit, Tigo, the two carriers will have to return 50 megahertz of spectrum. Together, they own 135 MHz in the AWS band, while the Colombian spectrum cap is 85 megahertz. The carriers have eight months to choose which spectrum will be returned and two years and four months to complete the devolution. Colombia’s regulator for industry and commerce, the SIC, had already called for the spectrum return, but the carriers appealed. With its most recent decision, the SIC confirmed that the carriers had to return spectrum.

More news from Latin America:

• Cable & Wireless Communications’ business in the Cayman Islands, LIME, has completed the roll-out of its new LTE network. The network was installed by Ericsson as the sole supplier, covering 100% of the islands.
• Chile reached 2.11 million ported fixed and mobile numbers since the mobile number portability system was launched in January 2012.
• AT&T’s offer to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion will impact Latin American business. DirecTV is the biggest pay TV provider in the region with 18 million subscribers in Central and South America.
• Oi recently released a material fact about the combination of Oi, Portugal Telecom SGPS S.A. and TmarPart.
• NII Holdings is said to be looking at establishing an MVNO operation for its Chilean unit, Nextel.
• Telefónica plans to invest nearly $1.8 billion to develop its operations in Peru between 2014 and 2016. The company’s investments will mainly focus on infrastructure deployment and service expansion across the country.

Fonte: http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20140522/americas/latam-brazil-approaches-2-5-million-lte-accesses/