Costa Rica's mobile telephony market won't be open to competition until 2011.
In the past 10 years, Costa Rica has been losing what was a privileged position in telecommunications. Statistics from the International Telecommunications Union show that the country, with 1.800.000 mobile phone subscribers, is ranked 160th in the list of 225 countries.
With 42 mobile phone lines per 100 inhabitants, Costa Rica is way below its Central American neighbors. Panama has 115, El Salvador 113, Guatemala 109, Honduras 85, Nicaragua 55. In the American continent, only Cuba and Haiti fare worse.
Active mobile phones increased from 6.7 million in June 2008 to 7.4 million today.
Data from Siget, the telecommunications superintendence, show there are more cell phones than people in the country. June 2007 census measured 5.7 million inhabitants.
"In El Salvador, the telephony market is shared among several companies, the most renowned being Tigo, Claro, Telefónica and Digicel, who are engaged in an advertising war for obtaining a larger chunk of the telecom pie", reports Elsalvador.com.
Panama imported $190 million worth of mobile phones in 2008, at a time when Claro was not operating in the country and Digicel was just starting.
This industry is growing at rapid pace, fueled by the fast advances in technology, as new features are being added almost constantly: longer lasting batteries, internet navigation, video calls, GPS, etc.
Panama's mobile phone penetration stands at 115%, meaning that each Panamanian uses more than one device on average.
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Mobile phones, the strongest sector for the regional economy, registered a decline in earnings in 2008.
El Periódico reported on its website: "While América Móvil added 1 million new customers in Central America in 2008, revenues from its subsidiaries in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua fell by 3.4 % and its profits were reduced by 26.6%.
By the end of 2008, El Salvador had the largest number of cell phones per person in Central America, with 6.6 million for a population of 5.8 million.
Experts say the large number of cell phones is a reflection of consumerism, promoted by intense advertising campaigns. Another factor that has played a role is the large number of Salvadorans living abroad, many of whom communicate with their families back home via mobile phone.
SmartTrust has been awarded a contract by América Móvil to deploy in CA its event-aware and subscriber-centric mobile device management solution.
With the automatic device configuration and SmartTrust's market leading Terminal Capability Repository, América Móvil (Claro) is now able to fully support their Value Added Services (VAS) and ensure that all the devices in its network will be recognized, correctly configured and optimized for the full extent of each device's specific potential and full capability.
Telefonica will incorporate the BlackBerry Bold, which has new applications as well as the options of expanding its memory up to 4 gigabytes.
This product will mainly be offered to the corporate clients/sector and independent professionals who are the most likely to find the BlackBerry useful in their daily lives, according to Ricardo Calderón, sales manager for big clients at Telefonica.
Telefonica Central America presented its regional program "Commitment to the Client" yesterday in Panama.
Said program seeks to reinforce its position as a telecommunication company that attends to the needs of its clients, the company pointed out in a statement.
Telefonica is looking to offer a service of "excellence" throughout its commercial chain, from buying a cell phone, to voice and data quality, post-sales, added value, technical services and billing.
The Digicel Group confirmed yesterday in Panama their decision to invest "multi-million dollar" sums of money in cellular communications in Central America.
In an attempt to shake up the main competition in the region, the investment will be carried out strongly geared towards components such as technology, equipment, and offers to consumers.
Luis La Rocca, Digicel Manager in El Salvador and spokesperson for Digicel Panama, highlighted that the company has invested $2.5 billion in developing its global network which includes some 7 million clients who are attended to by 4,000 workers, however he preferred not to divulge their total investment in Central America.
The platform, known as 3G, will offer Internet, TV, video calling and music services.
With the launch of this platform, both prepaid and postpaid users will benefit from Internet services at average speeds of 384 Kbps and 512 Kbps at the national level.
Prepaid clients will be able to obtain Internet services for a day at a cost of $2.66 and a USB modem at $150.
Telefonica will launch the Apple 3G terminal, iPhone, on August 22, making it initially available in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru and Uruguay.
The Director for Telefonica Latin America, Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, pointed out that the company hopes that the iPhone will have the "same success" in Latin America as it has enjoyed in countries such as Spain, the UK and Ireland.