Caribbean telecom roundup – Regional
LatAm LTE subs to reach 29mn this year – Regional
Clarovideo gaining LatAm ground on Netflix – Regional
Costa Rica’s Racsa gives back spectrum – Costa Rica
LTE surpasses 10% of global mobile subs in Q2 – Regional

Caribbean telecom roundup – Regional
Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) will invest 7bn Jamaican dollars (US$59.4mn) in infrastructure and a new call center in the next year.
The call center will be established in Kingston and employ 400 people, managing director Garry Sinclair told the Jamaica Observer. It is expected to be completed by March 2016.
“We are renewing our vows with Jamaica,” he said, “and to do so, we have to make a spirited effort and consequential investment to greatly enhance the island’s telecoms landscape.”
***
Digicel is close to opening the largest data center in Trinidad and Tobago, with an overall capacity of 200 racks. The center will support SSAE SOC Type II and ISO27001 certification, focusing on the business processes and the security of the customer’s data.
The center will offer a full range of cloud services, including off-site data storage that can be backed-up on island. When launched, the data center will provide near 100% availability and require no shutdowns for equipment replacement and maintenance.
***
Dominican Republic telecom watchdog Indotel asked operators to urgently deploy the internet protocol IPv6 in the country, since the IPv4 currently in use is becoming obsolete worldwide.
The switch-off had been recommended by the watchdog in July 2014, but no upgrades have been made yet. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) decided to move up from IPv4 to IPv6 in 2010.
IPv6 is more suited for the growth of users, apps and devices, and will be critical in the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT).

LatAm LTE subs to reach 29mn this year – Regional
LTE subscriptions in Latin America and the Caribbean could reach 29mn by the end of the year and 259mn in 2020, 4G Americas reported citing data from consultancy Ovum.
Latin America and the Caribbean ended Q2 with 22.5mn LTE subscriptions, up 324% from June 2014. There were 70mn commercial networks in 28 countries, 52 in Latin America and 18 in the Caribbean.
The quarter ended with 54% of subscribers on GSM, 41% on HSPA, and only 3% on LTE.
At the same time an additional 68mn subscribers upgraded to HSPA networks while users of GSM-only technology dropped by 66mn.
4G Americas Latin America and Caribbean director José Otero said that the “announcements that several governments have made to assign spectrum for mobile broadband make for a more encouraging outlook for LTE in the region.”
Argentina recently awarded 3G and 4G spectrum, and Colombia and Peru have announced upcoming auctions for the 700MHz band.
LTE subscriptions worldwide surpassed 10% of global subscribers of mobile communications technologies in Q2 for the first time, according to Ovum, citing information from the Global Suppliers Association (GSA).

Clarovideo gaining LatAm ground on Netflix – Regional
Clarovideo is claiming a bigger chunk of the OTT streaming video services in Latin America. América Móvil’s streaming service had 39.7% of the Latin American market as of June, up from 32% in January.
According to consultancy Dataxis, Netflix is still the most popular streaming service in the region, with over half of the market. However, its market share is trending downward, having slipeed to 55.7% in June from 64% in January.
Netflix could have some 48mn subscribers in Latin America by 2020, according to a report by Rapid TV news. Digital TV Research calculates that non-US subscribers will reach almost 104mn by 2020. Of that amount Brazil, will have some 24.4mn, Mexico 10.6mn and the rest of Latin America 12.3mn.
[GRAFICO:FIGURA:ID_2012]
Clarovideo is currently the object of an investigation by Mexican telecom watchdog IFT for a potential breach of contract by América Móvil’s fixed telephony operator Telmex, which is prevented from offering pay TV services.
IFT had announced back in June that it would look into Telmex’s video offerings, to which América Móvil responded that Clarovideo is offered by a third party.

Costa Rica’s Racsa gives back spectrum – Costa Rica
Costa Rican broadband provider Racsa has asked to give up several of spectrum concessions, including some critical to deploying 5G network services in the future.
Racsa, which is part of Costa Rica’s state-owned ICE group, requested the termination of some of its concessions in the 5,713MHz band, which includes frequencies for local connections. Some of them, included in the 5,925-6,425MHz, would be suitable for 5G.
The provider is still keeping some of its spectrum, including the 5,850-6,425MHz, which could be used for 5G.
Daily El Financiero speculated that the company may be getting ready to give up its wireless communication services, a market in which it faces plenty of competition from local operators looking for corporate clients.
Racsa, which asked for the early termination in September 2013, has been the subject of bankruptcy rumors for some time now. ICE recently sued the nation’s comptroller’s office for auditing the broadband provider.

LTE surpasses 10% of global mobile subs in Q2 – Regional
LTE subscriptions worldwide surpassed 10% of global subscribers of mobile communications technologies in Q2 for the first time, according to the Global Suppliers Association (GSA).
Citing numbers from Ovum, Alan Hadden, VP of research with GSA, said that 441mn LTE subscriptions were added in the past year, for 140% growth. At end-June, there were 755mn LTE subscriptions.
Latin America and the Caribbean 4G/LTE subscriptions grew 324% to 22.5mn at the end of June from a year earlier.
Asia Pacific was the global leader with 51.2% of global LTE subs, followed by North America (26.2%), Europe (15.9%) and Rest of World (6.7%). In the Asia Pacific region, China surpassed 225mn LTE subscriptions, with 53.5mn in Q2 alone.
The GSA forecasts over 1bn LTE subscriptions worldwide by the end of 2015 and 3.6bn by end-2020. The forecast number for 2020 would give LTE a 42% market share of the 8.54bn mobile subs in that year.
Some 422 operators have launched LTE in 143 countries and 460 will have done so by end-2015.
Over 30% of operators are investing in LTE-Advanced systems, with the commercialization of carrier aggregation the first feature to be exploited.

The information presented and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of CANTO and/or its members