LATAM Telecom

"Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity." -H. Jackson Brown Jr. This is a follow up to my two previous posts where I discussed opportunities and my top five predictions for the Latin America mobile market in 2009. The global economic downturn has forced operators to take a second look at new investments for 2009; however, this can be a good opportunity to look at things differently. Operators can rethink their VAS strategy and Repackage, Reposition, and Reinvent services and adapt to succed in the new economic environment. What follows is a list of services that, based on my experience, have a higher probability for success in 2009-2010: Reinvent voice .... Operators will be watching CAPEX spending closely and looking for ways to reduce OPEX. In addition, voice will continue to be the greatest cash generator in the region through 2013; it therefore makes sense to think about services that will help them offer voice services as cost-effectively as possible. ... ...

It has been almost a year since the launch of the iPhone in the USA and only a few months since its introduction to the European maret. In this short period of time we have seen AT&T and Apple play with the pricing of the handset. Pricing for the service itself has not changed except for an additional package not offered in the beginning. In contrast, the European market sales of the device have not lived to expectations which shouldn't be surprising considering the price of the handset. The US and European markets offer interesting lessons for pricing the iPhone in Latin America: Both Apple and AT&T claim that the iPhone is selling in the U.S. up to expectations but overseas is a different matter . Everything seems to indicate the price is too high for the European market. Latin America is a low ARPU region but end users do not hesitate to buy high end devices. However, pricing the handset higher than a laptop is probably a big mistake. The number of users who are willing...

Voicemail has been a common service for both wireless and fixed network operators in Latin America for more than 10 years but it has remained essentially unchanged since its introduction. Calls on busy/unavailable/unreachable are transferred to Voicemail , where callers can leave a message. The called party receives a notification, usually by SMS and then dials in, enters a password and listens to recorded messages. Even though vendors like Comverse and Glenayre have had multimedia voicemail solutions for a while now, it was not until AT&T launched the iPhone that services like Visual Voicemail started gaining traction in the end user's perception. This is prompting operators to look into bringing their Voicemail into the 21st century. Even though it is a service that in many countries in Latin America has almost 100% penetration, operators have been slow in updating their Voicemail application. The iPhone's Visual Voicemail interface, however, is changing subscribers...