A lot is going on this week at Mobile World Congress 2014, held in Barcelona, Spain. With a number of announcements, RCR Wireless News has separated those related to the Latin American region, from both carriers’ and suppliers’ perspectives.
America Movil
Daniel Hajj, CEO of América Móvil, spoke during a keynote address about the need for spectrum licenses to be sold at reasonable prices. Hajj also noted that government regulations should be stable and predictable to stimulate and encourage continued investment.
During this speech, Hajj pointed to four areas that are central to the growth of service providers’ business in the coming years: the hyper-demand for data; growth of machine-to-machine; the evolution of ever-more sophisticated devices; and the exploitation of big data.
Hajj predicted that by 2016, two-thirds of the population of Latin America will have a smartphone. Speaking specifically about América Móvil, Hajj noted that 12 years ago the company generated 80% of its revenues from its home market of Mexico; now that figure stands at 32%. Similarly in 2002, voice accounted for 90% of America Movil’s revenue, Hajj said. Now it accounts for just 39%, with data and content services making up the lion’s share.
As for European investments, Hajj said that América Móvil is in early discussions with the Austrian government about the future of Telekom Austria that could see América Móvil take a larger stake in the former state monopoly. América Móvil wants to expand the Telekom Austria business into Eastern European markets, which Hajj said reminded him of how parts of Latin America had developed in the past.
Telefónica
Firefox expansion: Spain-based Telefónica, which has a significant presence in Latin America, announced that it plans to further leverage the Firefox OS and redouble its efforts to provide access to the Internet to the next billion consumers. Telefónica said this year it will be launching devices based on the Firefox OS in in eight new countries: Germany, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina and Ecuador, pushing the market total to 16 countries. Spain, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico and Chile already offer Firefox OS devices.
Also, Telefónica said it will expand the line of terminals available with the Firefox OS in all of the launch markets. The three models currently available — the Alcatel Onetouch Fire, LG Fireweb and ZTE Open — will be joined by another five devices that have already been confirmed by a number of manufacturers: the Alcatel OneTouch Fire C, Alcatel OneTouch Fire E, Huawei Ascend Y300 Ii, ZTE Open C and ZTE Open Ii.
Check out RCR Wireless’ video interview with Mozilla about Firefox’s new markets and strategic partnerships for 2014:
Network virtualization: Telefónica unveiled its UNICA initiative that is designed to provide the framework for the company’s global end-to-end virtualization deployment and expansion plans for its network infrastructure. UNICA is a new architecture for infrastructure teams where physical resources become virtual and are provisioned as such. The carrier said it has been actively involved in debates with open communities and standards bodies such as SDN, Openflow and OpenStack to improve existing solutions, and it is also working on proof-of-concepts with other industry players including Hewlett-Packard, Nokia Solutions and Networks, Ericsson, Broadsoft, Cisco, Intel and Juniper to define best uses for the new technologies.
Commenting on the initiative, Ovum principal analyst Steven Hartley said that Telefonica’s UNICA looks to overhaul the traditional telecom network. “Its impact will range from network-as-a-service capabilities to virtualized CPE. It promises to improve time-to-market for new services and create the efficient, flexible, virtual network of the future, and is precisely the response to revenue and margin pressure that telcos need,” Hartley pointed out.
Hartley also highlighted that by 2016, just 30% of Telefonica’s new infrastructure will be virtualized, which leaves a huge amount of new and, crucially, legacy infrastructure not virtual.
More virtualization news:
- Alcatel-Lucent said it has signed a deal with Telefónica for the adoption of network functions virtualization. The strategic relationship will use Alcatel-Lucent’s CloudBand NFV platform to identify and develop process models to help service providers decide which elements within the network should be virtualized and when. http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2014/alcatel-lucent-join-forces-telefonica-accelerate-industry-shift-network-functions
- Ericsson announced the launch of a joint R&D program with Telefónica aimed at understanding the challenges and opportunities in network transformation during the coming decade, specifically in the areas of NFV and service provider software-defined networking. http://www.ericsson.com/br/news/1763979
Iusacell
Mexican operators Iusacell said it has migrated the first 600,000 prepaid subscribers in Mexico onto its dedicated platform supplied by Elephant Talk Communications, a global provider of SDN architecture. Additional migrations are expected to happen throughout the first half of the year as Iusacell completes its transition and begins to roll out new services for its mobile network operator and mobile virtual network operator clients in the Mexican market. By the end of 2014, Iusacell said it expects to have more than eight million customers migrated to the Elephant Talk platform.
More Latin American-related announcements from MWC 2014:
- Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg talked at a keynote about partnerships the social media giant has signed with carriers to provide free access to Facebook. Zuckerberg named Paraguay’s Tigo as an example.
- Nokia launched its first Android handsets: the Nokia X, X+ and XL. According to the company, Latin American customers will be able to buy the smartphone in the second quarter and Brazil will be the first country to receive the new series. The Nokia X has the potential to have a significant impact in Latin America, where Nokia has managed to maintain significant market share.
“Nokia enjoys good relationships with all major players in [Latin America]. The entry-level segment is the fastest growing in the smartphone market in Latin America, but it is dominated by Android devices. Nokia’s portfolio at this segment, the Asha series, was struggling to match Android price points and, especially, Android vast availability of apps. Nokia X appeals to a customer that wants a phone with the quality of a Nokia with the price and app availability of Android,” noted Ari Lopes, analyst from Informa Telecoms & Media.
- RAD demonstrated its new intelligent interface MiNID, a device that can be plugged into legacy traffic equipment to update it as a carrier Ethernet services supporter. As noted by Dror Bin, CEO and President at RAD, this is particularly interesting to Latin American carriers whose networks are still in the process of being migrated to next-generation technologies.
- Sikur announced a partnership with Officer and MGI Internacional to distribute its security solution throughout Latin American, with the goal of 10,000 active users by the end of this year. Currently, Sikur counts 1,000 customers.
- Juniper Networks announced that TIM has deployed its SRX5600 and 5800 Series Services Gateway for improved performance, scalability and integrated security services across its new LTE network.
