Off the wire
• 3rd Ld Writethru-China Focus: Top political advisory body to discuss reform  • Sudan hosts tripartite Ethiopia dam meeting  • China facilitates agriculture modernization with pilot zones  • Singapore remains priciest city for expats  • Kenyan scholar roots for technology to re-invent African economies  • France's Lafarge to buy out 45 pct of Chinese subsidiary  • Michelle Obama to visit Cambodia in March  • Man From Macau tops China's box office  • Chinese telecom giant Huawei agrees to aid 5G development  • Senior north China official under investigation  
You are here: 　 Home

4G predicted to cover three quarters of Latin America by 2020

Xinhua, March 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

4G-LTE networks were predicted to cover over 75 percent of Latin America, according to data published by the mobile industry representatives GSMA at the Mobile World Congress on Tuesday.

The GSMA calculates that the increasing speed of 4G deployment means that 76 percent of the population in the region will have LTE access: 35 percent more than at the end of 2014.

As a result of this there will be a corresponding rise in 4G connections in Latin America and the current figure is expected to rise from less than 10 percent to around 25 percent over the next five years, with the total number of mobile connections predicted to expand from the current 709 million to 889 million by 2020, when 245 million of those connections will be made by 4G.

GSMA highlights that Latin American mobile operators are playing a major role in 4G expansion and predicts Capital Expenditure in the 4G network will total 193 billion U.S. dollars between 2014 and 2020, while pointing out operators in the region have invested around 8 billion dollars in spectrum licenses between 2012 and 2015, mainly with the aim of supporting 4G deployment.

The ever increasing use of smartphones in Latin America has also helped to drive the expansion of 4G, as smartphones accounted for 32 percent of connections there in 2014, a figure that is predicted to rise to 68 percent by 2020 when only the Asia-Pacific region will have a higher installed base for smartphones in the world.

Currently the majority of countries in Latin America account for between 31 and 39 percent of connections with that percentage as high as 47 percent in Venezuela, but well below the average in Peru (19 percent), Mexico (20 percent) and Guatemala (25 percent).

These three nations are predicted to see the sharpest rise in smartphone connections over the next five years, rising to 63 percent in Guatemala, 62 percent in Mexico and 57 percent in Peru, while Argentina and Brazil will see the percentage climb to 72 percent with Chile and Venezuela leading the way with 73 percent of all connections made by smartphones by 2020. Endit