BUENOS AIRES, Argentina-A strong discussion has started in Argentina about what platforms will prevail in Latin America. On the one hand, the 3G Americas organization maintains that GSM will be the most popular mobile technology in Latin America by 2006, when it will reach 48 percent of the market, while Qualcomm assures that will not happen considering CDMA has four times the number of clients than GSM in the region, and during the last year, CDMA gained three times more clients than GSM technology.
According to industry research, the current base of users in Latin America comprises TDMA (60 percent) followed by CDMA (22 percent), analog (13 percent) and GSM (5 percent)
On top of this, of the nine operators in the region that have already announced their intention to move toward 2.5-generation (2.5G) technology, five have done this using GSM/General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), three with CDMA 1xRTT, and one through CDMA IS-95B. Among these operators, BellSouth in Ecuador and Chile migrated from TDMA to CDMA 1xRTT, Telef
