LATAM Telecom

With the leak to El Universal informing us that Telcel will launch the iPhone later this year, we can expect intense competition for the iPhone in the rest of the region. It was clear that Apple was not going to favor a global operator over another one. However, it is unlikely that neither Telefonica nor America Movil were willing to accept this condition, so we can probably expect now that the rest of the America Movil operations will be rushing to prepare for the iPhone launch, beginning with the largest markets: Brazil, Argentina and Colombia. Given this scenario, the other big players in the region, Vivo, Tim Brazil, Personal Argentina will have to come up with a strategy to counter the iPhone hype. This is a good opportunity for operators to revamp their messaging and data strategies. So far, the intense competition between operators in the region has consisted mainly of trying to outdo each other with the end result being a very standard offering, where subscribers cannot really...

Comverse at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was selected as a finalist for the 2008 GSMA Global Mobile Award in the Best Mobile Messaging Service category. They showed us not only their iPhone Visual VoiceMail but also other demos for different types of handsets for non iPhone operators and segments. This is probably the single most important breaktrhough innovation in VoiceMail since it was launched. Interestingly, the breakthrough came form an outsider, breaking all the rules to which both operators and handset vendors had played for years. As we have reported here before, there are strong rumors that Telcel Mexico and Claro Brazil are next in line to launch the iPhone. Given the size of the market and the dominance of both operators, it's a non brainer Apple might want to partner with them. The question is, will Venezuela and Argentina also be considered, given the size and importance of both markets. Venezuela, for example, is expected to be similar in size as Brazil for mes...

Not sure what to think of the headline in the Newspaper CLARIN highlighting the success of Instant Messaging in Argentina: "One hundred thousand already chatting in their mobile phone: IM has been in service for more than a year" (loosely translated for my readers that do not read Spanish, link here for those that do). I understand the point they are trying to make but somehow, if the news is that the service has been there for ONE YEAR .... so do people in Argentina actually know about the service ... after one year? Anyway, other than the weird headline (blame the editors!), the article is well written and informative, and covers the efforts by both Movistar Argentina and Telecom Personal. However .... we will discuss their statistics later, it is an interesting topic. As we mentioned here before, Movistar Chile and Argentina were the first to sign an agreement with MSN, leading the region with these services. Movistar, however, launched a WAP version of the service using M...