The Brazilian telecommunications wholesale market could become more competitive as Colombian Internexa, which is affiliated with ISA, announced the launch of services in Brazil. Internexa said it has invested $30 million into its Brazilian operations with the goal to gain 21% market share over the next five years.
ISA is involved in energy electric transport, road concession, construction of infrastructure projects and telecommunications transport.
Brazil is set to play a big role in Internexa’s strategy. The company noted that currently its Colombian operations accounted for 75% of its $70 million in 2011 revenues. It expects it Brazilian operations to represent the largest share of revenues over the next four or five years.
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In an exclusive interview with RCR Wireless News, Internexa CEO Genaro García Domínguez did not break out the precise share it expects to come from its Brazilian operations, but noted the company will put a significant effort toward enhancing its Brazilian operations. As key pillars to support the growth Domínguez listed the Brazilian market size, along with its huge demand for telecoms services driven by future events, including the 2014 FIFA World Cup, 2016 Olympics Games and local content access.
Internexa noted that creating internal demand and to keep the local access was crucial to its success. To meet those demands, the company unveiled a content distribution network, which is a system of computers containing copies of data placed at various nodes of the network to improve access with reduced access latency. The nodes are located in Brazil and Colombia.
“Throughout Latin America, local content represents 20% of total Internet traffic, while in Brazil it is 40%,” said Rogério Carvalho, director for Internexa’s Brazilian operation.
“In Europe, they had a similar rate of Latin America, but in eight years they could change it to have between 70% and 80% of local content,” added Domínguez.
Internexa also plans to launch CDN services in Argentina, Peru and Ecuador, but did not disclose a time frame for that expansion.
Until now, the company has had access to a 21,000 kilometer fiber-optic network integrating Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and more recently, Brazil, where the company has bought network a guarantee of 3,500 kilometers of fiber and point of presence access in in São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro from Level 3.
Although Internexa does not currently serve clients in Brazil, its executives said they are talking with telecom groups.
In most of the fiber network extension, Internexa bases its infrastructure on electricity transmission networks, but it also has terrestrial networks and access to seven heads of submarine cables.
