RIO DE JANEIRO – With a population of 3.25 million, Uruguay had a mobile phone penetration of 141% in December 2011, but its broadband penetration lagged at only 36% (14% fixed, 22% mobile). It’s on this potential market that Uruguay’s state-owned telecommunications company Antel is focusing its LTE efforts.
“There are opportunities for mobile broadband, since the penetration of home computers has increased as well as network traffic,” said Natalia Pignataro, product and content engineer at Antel. According to Pignataro, Antel accounts for 46% of the total mobile services market share and 96.2% of fixed Internet.
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Antel launched last December its LTE offerings in Montevideo and Punta del Este cities, and after carrier has conducted field trials. Next steps comprise expanding to more cities, roaming, voice (circuit switched fallback), and small cell deployments.
During this week’s Informa’s LTE Latin America event, Pignataro commented that its current subscriber number is still low due to high price and coverage areas. Named Vera Móvil, there are two LTE plans packages: 30 GH by US$ 90 (in a two-year contract) and 15 GB by US$ 76, plus a modem rent for R$ 13 (minimum 15-day and automatically renewable). Both plans have throughput of 20 Mbps for downlink and 2 Mbps for uplink.
Antel has conducted pilots and trials during 2011 and, after it was guaranteed licenses with regulator URSEC, the company was able to launch commercial operations. Pignataro said Antel is using the 10 megahertz in AWS band. During trials, using 7 eNodes, IP/MPLS backhaul, full ePC and dongles, carrier tested latency, throughput, coverage, mobility and self-organizing networks (SON) of its LTE network.
Alcatel-Lucent was chosen to provide end-to-end LTE solution, including LTE base stations (eNodeBs), the IP wireless Evolved Packet Core, and operations and maintenance services. ANTEL will also be using Alcatel-Lucent’s IP portfolio of products for backhaul of mobile traffic.
