Digicel wins legal victory over CWJ in Jamaica phonebook directory dispute – Jamaica

Roundup: LACNIC, Digicel, Pay TV – Regional

Emtelco eyeing Central America expansion on UNE-Tigo merger – Central America, Colombia

4GIP deployments to mature in Latin America in 3-5 years, says Ericsson – Regional

Roundup: Opera Mediaworks, Indec, Digital TV – Regional

 

Digicel wins legal victory over CWJ in Jamaica phonebook directory dispute – Jamaica

A Jamaican appeals court has ruled that Caribbean mobile telco Cable & Wireless Jamaica (CWJ) does not have copyright of its phonebook directory listings, thus granting a legal victory for rival Digicel, The Jamaica Observer reported.

The dispute dates back to the market entry of Digicel in 2001, which ended CWJ’s monopoly on telecoms services. In 2003, the Office of Utilities Regulation began to take steps to liberalize access to directory services, which includes CWJ’s directory database, something that CWJ challenged in 2005.

In 2011, the supreme court ruled against CWJ, declaring its customer and directory database and listings do not qualify as original intellectual creations and so are not protected by the Copyright Act. CWJ appealed.

The appeals court is yet to give the reasons for its ruling as of Friday Dec 20.

The ruling could help Digicel increase the size of its own phonebook, called Redbook, which is a steady revenue source, according to the report.

This year Digicel began challenging CWJ’s traditional monopoly of the fixed line market by introducing its own fixed wireless service.

 

 Roundup: LACNIC, Digicel, Pay TV – Regional

The Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) has awarded its lifetime achievement award to Trinidad-born technology expert, Bevil Wooding, LACNIC said in a statement.

Wooding’s efforts have led to the deployment of IXPs in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica and Barbados.

Established in 2009, the LACNIC awards the honors to people who have contributed significantly to the development of the internet and the information society in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Jamaican telecoms operator Digicel has reached 600,000 fans on its Facebook page, local press reported.

“Having a large fan base helps us to engage with more of customers on a daily basis and hear directly from them how their needs and wants are evolving,” company senior communications manager Shelly-Ann Harris said. “This is important information that directly feeds into the services that we offer and the projects that we develop,” she added.

As part of the celebrations, the person that made the 600,000th click on the Facebook page’s ‘like’ button won a brand new Digicel 4G smartphone plus credit.

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A total of 61.5% of homes in Peru’s capital Lima had access to pay TV services at the end of the third quarter, an increase of 3.8 percentage points compared to end-September 2012, according to the latest report by the country’s statistics bureau INEI.

By end-September, the number of homes in rural areas of Peru with access to this service reached 8.9%, an increase of 1.9 percentage points year-on-year, according to the report.

 

 Emtelco eyeing Central America expansion on UNE-Tigo merger – Central America, Colombia

Colombian contact center firm Emtelco, part of state-run multi-utility EPM, is expectantly eyeing the Central American market as it awaits the planned merger between EPM telecoms unit UNE and multinational Millicom’s (Nasdaq: MIC) local subsidiary Tigo, according to Guatemalan daily El Periódico.

“Central America has a lot of potential for us because Millicom is an important player in the region… providing great opportunities for expansion,” said Emtelco’s general manager Rodrigo Ferreira.”There are a lot of big companies [in the region] we could partner with.”

Currently Colombia accounts for around 95% of the firm’s sales, according to the report.

4GIP deployments to mature in Latin America in 3-5 years, says Ericsson – Regional

Latin American operators are likely to complete migration to 4GIP networks within the next 3-5 years as demands from cloud and video services and advanced mobile devices will warrant a “new kind of network,” Ericsson’s (Nasdaq: ERIC) director of fixed broadband and convergence for Latin America, Valerio Manca, told BNamericas.

According to Manca, all Latin American operators have either started or are at an advanced stage of converting their networks to IP and most are deploying LTE technology.

“It is well understood that the fundamental technology will be IP and access to backhaul and aggregation and transport networks will all be IP. There are still a number of legacy technologies but those will be phased out in the next few yrs,” Manca said.

According to the executive, networks are having to adapt to the changing nature of traffic. Ericsson summarizes the new parameters of those networks into four dimensions: simplicity, scalability, smartness and performance.

Essentially the demands on networks are forcing them to become more complex. But at the same time, operators want their networks to be simpler and to have more control over them so that they can rapidly introduce new services to remain competitive.

4GIP networks will allow for the introduction of new technologies like software defined networks (SDN) and network virtualization, which will allow operators to create virtual private networks within their networks on an on-demand basis, for example.

This could help operators better monetize their networks and make better margins on their investments, which are constantly under pressure from over the top (OTT) players, Manca said.

The full interview with Manca can be read at this link.

Roundup: Opera Mediaworks, Indec, Digital TV – Regional

US mobile advertising platform Opera Mediaworks has expanded its presence in Latin America, the firm said in a statement.

The firm will service the region through offices in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico and Miami.

Opera Mediaworks is a fully-owned subsidiary of Opera Software.

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Mobile subscribers in Argentina sent 12.2bn SMS during November, a 10% increase compared to the same month of 2012, national statistics bureau Indec said.

The figure also represents a 4.6% decrease compared to the previous month.

During the first eleven months of the year, the number of sent SMS expanded 17.9% compared to the year-ago period.

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Venezuelan state-run telco Cantv has inaugurated a new digital TV aerial in Miranda state, bringing the total locations served nationwide to 18, the operator said in a statement.

In October, the government of Venezuela launched the second phase of the deployment of digital TV infrastructure, Cantv said.

This second phase stipulates the deployment of nine stations for the provision of terrestrial digital TV services.

The DTH service is provided through the country’s Simón Bolívar satellite.