Omar Perez of Entel used his keynote at LTE LatAm in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to discuss how mobile broadband could significantly improve the quality of people’s lives.
Bolivia’s Entel runs the gamut in terms of telephony, providing everything from mobile, to fixed line, to public services, Internet, wholesale and satellite HD TV.
The Bolivian mobile market itself is comprised of three operators with most subscribers currently still using 2G services (some 71% at last count in December of 2010). Meanwhile, broadband service penetration across Bolivia is still very poor, standing at just 8%.
With a population density of nine people to every square kilometer in Bolivia, and a rural population of 34%, the country’s operators are struggling to deploy wireless to as many areas as possible, in order to cover the most people.
Perez believes this could be a lucrative investment and that at some point in the future, ENTEL’s data traffic revenue could represent over 25% of the company’s whole.
“Telecommunications is a basic right for all people,” said Perez, noting that Entel was working in accordance with current Bolivian government policies to offer telecommunications services to urban, suburban and rural areas.
Entel already has HSPA (1900MHz, 850MHz), HSPA+ (850 MHz) and WiMAX (3500 MHz) technologies deployed in certain areas and says it is already performing LTE 4G trials on the 700MHz band.
WiMAX and LTE, however, have been positioned towards enterprise rather than the general consumer. Thus far, Entel’s LTE trials have yielded results of 65 Mbps in downlink and 25 Mbps in uplink, with latency of 5ms.
The questions Entel still has regarding LTE, however, are abundant. Will it be possible to implement a flat rate? Perez asked. Will it be possible to offer High Definition video for the mass market? And will LTE technology be sustainable in the long term, for emerging markets? The answers remain to be seen.
Perez was proud to relate that ENTEL was taking what he called “the leading role” to launch HSPA+ technology in Bolivia, though the first phase of the project only allows for data access (PS), while the second phase will involve voice (CS) too.
Towards the end of 2010, Perez said ENTEL started “an aggressive deployment” of mobile broadband access in five main cities, while HSPA+ networks are being tested in three cities.
Perez also claimed Entel had a main differentiator to its competitors in that the firm has worked hard to implement a robust backhaul solution. “That’s the reason that all our NodeBs are connected to ENTEL’s Metro-Ethernet network,” he said.
Nowadays, he added, subscriber access is allowed through USB modems (dongles) too.
In short, Entel’s hopes for Bolivia are to be able to cover the most people across the largest geographic areas of the country and focusing on offering Internet access to the most subscribers in the hope of wirelessly improving their lives.
