Chile has reached 4,342,397 mobile broadband Internet connections, representing a 24.9% penetration, according to the latest report from Chile’s secretary of telecommunications, Subtel. Smartphone Internet connections represented 70.82% while dongles (modems) accounted for 29.18% of all 3G accesses by the third quarter of 2012.
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Entel PCS led the Chilean Internet mobile broadband market in September, owning 42.7% of the market, followed by Telefónica’s Movistar with 37.9% and América Móvil’s Claro with 15.9%. The remaining market share was divided up among new players: VTR Móvil (1.01%), Nextel (1.90%), and the mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) Virgin (0.58%) and GTD Móvil (0.02%).
The number of mobile broadband connections in September 2012 (4,342,397) was 39.9% higher than the 3,103,815 connections in December 2011. As for fixed-Internet broadband, Subtel noted that there were 2,163,420 connections in September, a 6.8% growth compared to 2,025,066 from December 2011.
Subtel highlighted that mobile broadband connections with speeds higher than 1 Mbps have begun to increase in the third quarter of 2012, as noted below:
Subtel also released that Chile had 23,188,370 active mobile phones in September 2012, which is 3.5% more than in December 2011. Mobile phone penetration reached 132.57% in September, while fixed-telephony penetration was 18.88% and Internet broadband (both mobile and fixed) was 37.30%.
Post-paid customers increased 4.4% between December 2011 and September 2012, while prepaid lines rose 3.2%. However, prepaid accesses are still much higher than post-paid in Chile, representing 16,390,382 lines. There were 6,797,988 postpaid lines.
The Chilean mobile phone market is led by Telefónica’s Movistar with a 37.9% market share, followed by Entel PCS with 37.8%, América Móvil’s Claro with 23.5% and Nextel with 0.38%. As for other carriers, Virgin had a 0.29% market share, and VTR Móvil had 0.21%.
Nextel, Virgin and VTR Móvil are new players in the Chilean wireless market. Today, there are nine competitors in the mobile market: Movistar, Entel PCS, Claro, Nextel, VTR Móvil, Interexport, Netline, Virgin Mobile and GTD Móvil. In addition, a new MVNO, Falabella Móvil, is expected to enter the market during the first half of 2013.
As noted earlier by Subtel, this year marked a milestone for the Chilean wireless telecom market with the arrival of new operators and increased competition. The new operators, including Virgin Mobile, VTR Móvil, Nextel, GTD Móvil and Netline, added 200,000 subscribers between April and September.
According to Subtel, following number portability regulation, carriers started to make special offers and reduce prices. The watchdog agency highlighted that number portability was a key factor in reducing prices. As of September 2012, the agency said that 556,366 mobile users asked to switch carriers while keeping their mobile number.
The telecoms’ GDP was also noted in Subtel’s report. While Chilean economic growth represented by GDP showed an increase of 5.5% in the second quarter of 2012 compared to the same period of 2011, the GDP of the communications sector rose 6.1% in the same period.
For the future, it is important to note that because of the explosive growth of mobile Internet and mobile broadband connections, Chile needs more capacity and speed for wireless networks and optical fiber capillary networks throughout the country.
Therefore, the government launched a spectrum auction in the 2.6 GHz band for deployment of advanced generation networks (commonly known as LTE). The auction offered 120 MHz in total, segmented into three blocks of 40 MHz each (one FDD scheme with 20 +20 MHz). As a result, Movistar, Claro and Entel (through its subsidiary WILL) were awarded 40 MHz each and must provide Internet access to 543 isolated communities, as stated in the contest rules.
In addition to the 2.6 GHz auction, Subtel will soon offer a new auction in the 700 MHz the spectrum band under the Asia-Pacific (APT) model.
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