Colombia’s Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications has received six applications from telecom operators interested in participating in the frequency band auction aimed at deploying LTE across the country. The interested firms were DirecTV, Avantel, ETB, Claro, Telefónica and a consortium of companies led by Mexico’s Azteca 4G. Of note was the  absence of applications [...]

RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazilian operator Oi became the country’s second wireless carrier to launch LTE services, with initial commercial services beginning today in Rio de Janeiro and further expansion planned for the five cities that will host the FIFA Confederations Cup. By the first half of May, Oi said it will have commercial LTE [...]

Brazilian telecommunication providers reached a record investment level in 2012 with inflows of U.S.$12.53 billion (R$25.3 billion). The money was mostly spent on network expansions, increasing coverage and improving quality of services. The total investment made last year represents an increase of 11% compared to 2011,  54% higher than the average annual contribution made since [...]

As an extension of a global agreement with Telefónica, the wireless backhaul provider Ceragon Networks has made a deal with the carrier’s Mexican unit to move forward with its network upgrades. With the addition of Mexico, Ceragon now provides high-capacity wireless backhaul solutions to Telefónica in four Latin American markets. The vendor made a global agreement with the [...]

A mobile call on March 7 between Subtel’s Undersecretary of Telecommunications, Jorge Atton, and the CEO of Claro Chile, Gerardo Muñoz, was the first call made in Chile using an LTE network. For the voice, they used 3G under CSFB (circuit switch fall back). In July, Chile’s telecom regulatory agency Subtel announced that carriers paid about [...]

Four Brazilian carriers announced infrastructure sharing agreements for the deployment of LTE networks. Following an announcement by TIM and Oi that they had made a deal to share telecom infrastructure, Vivo and Claro also announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding to share telecom infrastructure, such as cell sites, backbone and backhaul. One major [...]

Brazilians carriers that bought spectrum licenses in the 2.5 GHz frequency band at auction in June have until April to cover all the offices of the Confederations Cup, and by December 2013, they must also cover the branches and sub-offices of the 2014 World Cup. Of the four carriers who received licenses—Telefónica’s Vivo, América Móvil’s Claro, Oi [...]

Latin America now has 14 commercial LTE networks in nine countries, according to the latest count by the industry association 4G Americas. Last week it was Paraguay’s turn. The state-owned operator Copaco launched its LTE network, and the service is currently available in the capital Asuncion and the surrounding area. Copaco has deployed 109 radio [...]

Ensuring network quality is one of telecom operators’ biggest challenges. In Brazil, mobile carriers are facing huge governmental pressure to improve their service and network quality. TIM, the No. 2 carrier in the Brazilian market, is using Actix’s ActixOne platform to help identify and diagnose network issues quickly, and better target network optimization activities while ensuring [...]

Sometime between 2015 and 2016, 3G connections will surpass 2G in Latin America. After that point, 3G connections could rise to reach 58% of total accesses by 2017; 2G will still represent 37%, while LTE will account for 5%. These projections were showed at this year’s Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, [...]