@ LTE LatAm: Brazil declared strongest mobile broadband market in LATAM

RIO DE JANEIRO – Mike Roberts, principal analyst and head of Americas for Informa described Brazil as the “strongest mobile broadband market in the region,” during his opening keynote at the LTE conference in Rio de Janeiro, Tuesday.
The mobile broadband market in Brazil is also the eighth largest in the world, he said, calling it “substantial.”
In 2010 alone, the market grew at 163%, reaching 28 million subscriptions said Roberts.
While HSPA is still predominant locally in Brazil and in the LATAM region, Roberts said HSPA+ and other technologies were starting to make headway too.
“4G is not just LTE, especially in the U.S. where it’s more or less everything,” joked Roberts, alluding to T-Mobile USA Inc.’s recent marketing campaign calling its HSPA+ network “America’s largest 4G network.”
“It’s still very early days for LTE globally,” Roberts told the audience, adding that he certainly hadn’t expected to see LTE launched by the end of 2009. “When the news came through from Scandinavia, we were stunned,” he admitted.
LTE ready handsets were also emerging earlier than expected, he claimed, though he cautioned that early models had not been particularly good. “Battery life was awful, the user experience was not good,” he said, noting that the industry was still learning from its early experiences and was continuing to improve.
In terms of 4G roll-out in Latin America, Roberts said Colombia would be the first country to deliver 4G in the region.
Also interesting to see, said Roberts, was that while CDMA technology in the region is now showing signs of decline. By the end of 2010, CDMA had less than 5% technology market share in Latin America.