Ericsson Leads The LTE Market In Latin America

BY Editor

Ericsson

Nov 21, 2012– Stockholm, Sweden  (Techreleased) – Mobile broadband plays a key role in Latin America, as it does in other regions, increasing quality of life and contributing to economic development. Consumers are increasingly dependent on mobile broadband as many of them use smartphones to gain instant access to information, entertain themselves or interact socially.

According to the Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) Mobility Report published today, 14 million new mobile subscriptions were recorded in Q3 for a total of 676 million. Ericsson estimates that another 230 million mobile subscriptions will be added by 2018.

Few of the subscriptions are currently for LTE, but that will change markedly by 2018, when Ericsson predicts 10 percent of all mobile subscriptions in Latin America – approximately 90 million – will be LTE subscriptions.

LTE is currently being rolled out across the region and Ericsson has won many of the contracts for the new networks. Ericsson has signed LTE/EPC contracts with Claro, Oi, Telefónica | Vivo and TIM in Brazil; UNE in Colombia; Telcel in Mexico; and AT&T and Open Mobile in Puerto Rico. Once they have been deployed, Ericsson will have a more than 50 percent share of the Latin American LTE market in terms of volume.

Sergio Quiroga, Head of Region Latin America at Ericsson, says: “Ericsson has played a role in Latin America since 1896, most recently by helping it take important steps to implement mobility, broadband and cloud services. Our share of the region’s LTE market will be substantially larger than our share of the region’s 3G market. Our global leadership in LTE and mobile broadband has helped us achieve this.”

In addition to consumer demand, factors such as economic and technological development – driven by governments across the region – are contributing to the increase in mobile broadband subscriptions.

Brazil will play a key role in the technological transformation of the region. Purchasing power has increased and there are now more mobile phone subscriptions than people in the country. And with Brazil set to host the world’s two most watched sporting events in 2014 and 2016, there will be even more opportunities to boost national infrastructure.

In Latin America as a whole, Ericsson predicts that 3G technologies such as WCDMA/HSPA will largely replace 2G technologies such as GSM/EDGE by 2018. Whereas 3G technologies currently account for just 18 percent of all mobile subscriptions, they will account for 65 percent of subscriptions by 2018. 2G technologies will decline from 82 percent of all mobile subscriptions at present to 25 percent by 2018.

From a global perspective, Ericsson has now signed more than 90 LTE/EPC contracts and maintains its leading position in LTE and mobile broadband, currently providing coverage for 305 million of the 455 million global LTE population.