- SANTIAGO -(Dow Jones)- Chilean President Sebastian Pinera enacted a mobile and landline number portability law on Monday, which will allow users to change their operators without changing their phone number.
The law will make it easier for users to switch companies and will likely intensify competition.
As of June this year, there were 17.6 million cell phones and 3.5 million residential land lines in Chile, according to data provided by the Telecommunications Secretariat, which is almost 25% more than the number of inhabitants the nation has.
The law will allow users “to be owners of their own cellphone and landline numbers. So when they change from one company to another, they can keep their phone number, not the company,” Pinera said.
Additionally, Pinera enacted a law Monday to phase out national long-distance calling over the next three years.
“All of Chile will be able to communicate via local telephony, at local telephony prices, which will save Chilean users some 20.0 billion Chilean pesos [$41.8 million],” said Pinera.
The local unit of Spain’s Telefonica Moviles SA (TEM), Movistar, is the country’s largest cell provider, with Entel PCS, a unit of Entel (ENTEL.SN) coming in second. Claro, owned by Mexico’s America Movil (AMX, AMX.MX) is third, and Nextel holds a minority stake in the local wireless phone service market.
Pinera also set out the goal of having broadband internet for all of the nation’s 17.1 million people by 2014 and having free high-definition television in all households “in a prudent amount of time.”
In 2009, broadband penetration in Chile was 9.8% per 100 inhabitants, which is one of the highest rates in Latin America, according to recent independent studies. In terms of household penetration, 31% of the homes in the country have a broadband hook-up.
The country will “build the bulk of the digital highway by 2014, so that everyone can connect with broadband…and in a prudent amount of time, [have] high-definition television in all of Chile’s homes,” Pinera said.
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Chile President Enacts Landline, Mobile Number Portability Law
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