Now this is good news -- when this reporter started covering telecom a few years ago, case studies of success stories in Latin America were hard to come by. But according to David Berrios, manager of business development for Latin America at NTT (News - Alert) America [www.us.ntt.com], responsible for the company’s IP sales and overall market strategy in the Latin America region, “the world of telecommunications in Latin America has seen staggering growth in the past few years.”
And IP transit growth equates to big dollars.
As Berrios says, even five years ago “carriers were dealing with STM-1 or STM-4 based networks, today they are trying to meet demand with 10GigE. The pre-YouTube (News - Alert), pre-Twitter, pre- 3G and even (gasp...) pre-iPhone days now seem like a walk in the park.”
And to answer your next question no, “…not even the global economic crisis has put a damper on this growth. In Mexico, for example, Cofetel, Mexico’s telecom regulatory agency, reported that Mexico’s telecom sector has been averaging a ten per cent quarterly growth despite the huge hit the country has taken during the financial crisis.”
On a recent trip to South America, Berrios attended “two very interesting industry events. Although both events had a different focus, a common thread was discernible throughout -- broadband is king.”
It’s his opinion that IP transit growth in the region is driven by “mobile broadband, converged services over broadband (triple and quadruple play) and government initiatives that encompass elements of both mobile and fixed broadband.”
A couple months ago TMC’s Erik Linask (News - Alert) wrote that at a recent industry event, Michael Skopek from 2N Telecommunications discussed the impact of Asterisk (News - Alert) in Latin America, claiming that most Latin American businesses are very interested in open source in general, and Asterisk, in particular:
“Why shouldn't they be? It provides a low-cost alternative to more expensive proprietary solutions without sacrificing functionality. In fact, with a few skilled programmers, it increases flexibility of the communications system. More specifically, he suggests that Asterisks' flexibility - and all the things that Asterisk can be -- allow telecom providers like 2N to introduce new services to their existing customers.”
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Erin Monda