Argentina’s president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced the entry of the Argentine state-run telecom firm, Arsat, into the mobile telephony segment as an MVNO player. Operating under the name Libre.ar, the new phone company will use 25% of the mobile spectrum, which according to the government, will “balance the mobile phone market.”
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The Argentinean government’s intervention in the economy has increased significantly over the past year, as noted earlier by Informa’s Marceli Passoni in an Analyst Angle article.
The MVNO launch came after the Argentinian government cancelled the planned auction wireless spectrum in September and instead allocated 25% of 3G spectrum to the state-owned satellite operator, Arsat. The government said the move was necessary to prevent a monopoly.
As Maria Agustina Di Genaro, ICT industry analyst from Frost & Sullivan, pointed out since the Arsat launch the government has been launching new business units, such as fixed telephony services, broadband services (with 22,000 kilometers of fiber optic), digital TV and mobile telephony services.
“The Argentinean government is planning to invest U.S.$1.341 billion in the telecommunications sector in 2013 as part of the ‘Argentina Connected Program,’ in free-to-air digital terrestrial TV and in the use of 3G frequencies. This amount represents 46.2% more than the $928.4 million that had been spent in 2012,” Genaro wrote in her Analyst Angle column.
Genaro also pointed out that while the national government continues to promote the “Argentina Connected Program,” the three largest mobile telephony operators in the country, Claro, Movistar and Personal, still require spectrum to continue growing and innovating services, such as the ones that are only possible with LTE.
Informa’s Passoni also saw this move as a significant obstacle. “The government’s decision to award spectrum to Arsat undermines operators’ plans to launch LTE in the near future. Claro and Personal were considering launching 4G services using the spectrum granted to Arsat,” she wrote.
