By Anthony Esposito | Published December 14, 2010 | Dow Jones Newswires
SANTIAGO -(Dow Jones)- There are more cell phones in Chile than there are people, the government’s INE statistics institute said Tuesday.
With 19.4 million cell phones distributed across the Andean nation as of October, there were nearly 1.1 cell phones for each of Chile’s estimated 17.1 million inhabitants.
Highlighting the explosion in cell phone penetration, in 2006 there were only 11.9 million cell phones for Chile’s then 16.4 million population, INE said.
Between 2000 and 2009, Chileans made 94.5 billion domestic calls on their cell phones, racking up 126.7 billion minutes, and 264 million international calls, for some 788 million minutes, according to INE.
Meanwhile, Chileans are expected to make 3.87 million local landline phone calls this year, totaling 8.93 million minutes, up from 6.84 million calls and 14.8 million minutes totaled in 1998, INE said.
For the first 10 months of the year, Chileans made 430 million domestic calls and 32 million international calls on landlines.
Meanwhile, in 2009 Chileans made 62,278 calls on public pay phones, totaling 59,131 minutes, compared to 114,518 calls made in 2004 for 136,915 minutes.
The local unit of Spain’s Telefonica Moviles SA (TEM), Movistar, is the country’s largest cell provider, with Entel PCS, a unit of Entel (ENTEL.SN) coming in second. Claro, owned by Mexico’s America Movil (AMX, AMX.MX) is third, and Nextel holds a minority stake in the local wireless phone service market.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera recently enacted a mobile and landline number portability law, which will allow users to change their operators without changing their phone number. The law will make it easier for users to switch companies and is expected to intensify competition.
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