Latin America Likes GSM Wireless

Americas : GSM has the highest annual growth of any wireless technology in Latin America and the Caribbean reports 3G Americas - with a 121% increase in customers from June 2002 to June 2003 according to EMC World Cellular Database. Five years ago, GSM was operating in only four countries in the region and has rapidly extended to 36 countries today, making it the fastest growing technology. Wireless carriers in the region currently operate 66 GSM wireless networks.

To date, 32 TDMA operators in Latin America and the Caribbean have chosen the GSM migration choice, while just six have chosen the CDMA migration route. Erasmo Rojas, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas commented, "The GSM/GPRS/EDGE migration path has proven to be the best technical and business choice for both new operators and existing TDMA operators evolving to 3G networks and will support the many consumer and corporate wireless data applications available with the GSM technology."

Rojas continued, "The 66 Latin American and Caribbean operators supporting the de-facto standard GSM have the advantage of capitalizing on GSM's global footprint and 72% market share by providing their customers roaming coverage throughout the Americas, Europe and the rest of the world." GSM is deployed in 179 countries throughout the world and has 880 million total global customers. Rojas stated, "In the past twelve months, 178 million new customers have selected GSM throughout the world, representing more customers than the total number of customers for any other mobile technology."

Gabriela Baez, Senior Analyst, Americas Group for Pyramid Research commented, "GSM first entered the Latin American marketplace in 1998 in Chile with the majority of new GSM operators entering the market in the past few years. GSM will emerge as the most popular wireless standard in Latin America and the Caribbean by the end of 2005 with more subscribers than CDMA." Ms. Baez added, "In the past three years, GSM has caught up with CDMA in Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of number of operators and network deployments. This year, for the first time, we forecast more GSM new subscriber additions than CDMA and TDMA."

Brazil and Mexico
GSM's success is clearly demonstrated in the two largest markets in Latin America.

In Brazil, the largest market in the region, nine of the twelve TDMA operators who have announced a migration strategy have selected the GSM technology. GSM accounted for a 27% market share of new Brazilian subscribers in 2002 and that new customer share doubled to 54% by 1Q 2003. According to ANATEL, Brazil's regulatory entity, CDMA operators in Brazil lost nearly 55,000 customers during May and June of 2003.

In Mexico, significant changes have occurred in the past twelve months. Telefonica Movil (MoviStar) recently initiated a transition from CDMA to GSM in order to become competitive in the marketplace. Mexico's CDMA network of the Grupo Iusacell reported a subscriber base decrease of 11% during the last year. This is in strong contrast to Telcel, which reported a 13% increase in subscribers during the same period. Telcel launched its GSM network in October 2002 and has exceeded expectations in new GSM customer growth.

Advantages of GSM
Chris Pearson, Executive Vice President of 3G Americas stated, "GSM is the fastest growing technology in the Americas because it brings indisputable advantages to wireless operators and their customers." He added, "The voice and data technical advancements, economies of scale, new innovative services and global roaming all add up to making GSM the preeminent wireless technology for the Americas and the world."

GSM customers will experience portability of services on a wide variety of handsets and the ability to roam using a single device and phone number throughout the world. Adding to the ease of roaming is the fact that Latin American regulatory bodies have established cellular and PCS in all frequencies, allowing GSM to be offered in the 800/900/1800/1900 MHz bands.