Ecuador’s national telecommunications regulator, Conatel, has given the public company CNT EP (Ecuadorian Corporacion Nacional de Telecomunicaciones) approval to provide technology services using the next generation of mobile technology.
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According to the Minister of Telecommunications and Information Society, Jaime Guerrero Ruiz, CNT will be able the use 30 MHz in the 700 MHz band and 40 MHz in the 1700-2100 band to deploy LTE. With this decision, CNT will be the first company in Ecuador to receive authorization to provide the technology.
In October, Conatel decided that the country will use the 700 MHz spectrum band, also known as the digital dividend, to deploy the next generation of telecommunication services using LTE technology. Conatel also announced that it has chosen the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) segmentation standard.
Last March, CNT announced its selection of Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei as 3G providers. Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will also design and deploy a complete end-to-end W-CDMA network, and provide maintenance and network optimization services.
However, it is not yet clear which vendors will be CNT’s LTE providers.
CNT is currently the largest telecom provider in Ecuador. It originally formed through a merger of Andinatel S.A. and Pacifictel S.A. in 2008. CNT went public in early 2010 and later that year officially merged with mobile operator Telecsa (Alegro). CNT offers fixed and mobile telephony, Internet services and pay-TV.
