LATAM Telecom

"Out of suffering comes creativity. You cannot spell painting without pain." John Lithgow in Third Rock From the Sun Halfway through the first quarter of the year, the outlook for the economy continues to deteriorate with operators and technology vendors facing reduced CAPEX, delayed investments and slower growth rates. LATINFOCUS (January 2009) expects Latin America to grow at the slowest pace in seven years; industry analysts estimate wireless subscriber growth in 2009 to be between 5% (Yankee Group) and 8% (Moody's), down from double digit growth in previous years ( Reinhardt Krause , Investor's Business Daily). Moody's analyst Nymia Almeida ( Reinhardt Krause , Investor's Business Daily) states that operators like America Movil still expect a 10% subscriber growth but with mobile penetration reaching saturation in major markets and slower growth rates this year, the only way they can achieve this is via churn from other operators. What can operators do in...

"Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” -Galileo Galilei The intersection of the mobile space and the Internet continues to be a challenge for mobile operators. Mobile advertising, for example, is getting a lot of attention in the mobile industry but it has yet to consolidate as a significant revenue generator (see Mobile Advertising - Learning to play by the rules ). Internet marketing and Web analytics have come a long way in the last five years, but there is still a long way to go in the mobile space. Interestingly, mobile operators are actually very good with metrics, when it comes to voice. They have precise indicators to evaluate network productivity, performance and utilization as well as detailed demographic and psychographic user data. However, when it comes to Web analytics, mobile operators have not even started exploring its potential. Even in the USA, operators lag behind other industries such as finance and retail. Other regions such as La...

The current world recession is leading businesses and consumers to curtail spending, which is expected to affect growth and revenues during 2009. Every day we hear about how operators are preparing to face this economic downturn with layoffs and by reducing CAPEX and OPEX; just last week, AT&T announced plans to cut 4% of its work force ( Cellular News ); Sprint Nextel is also expected to announce job cuts in 2009 ( Cellular News ). In Latin America, Millicom recently announced that 2009 CAPEX will be “substantially lower” than in 2008 and Telefonica stated last week that the region will continue to grow, but at a slower rate than previously expected. Despite the current economic downturn, there are opportunities operators have to introduce new services with minimal CAPEX. By analyzing end user behavior, traditional services such as Voice Mail, SMS and MMS can be repackaged and launched as new services, leveraging existing VAS infrastructure and reducing CAPEX normally required f...