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2008 Latin America - Internet Broadband and Convergence Statistics--ChinaCCM.com has announced to offer Year-End discounts on new-add reportshttp://www.chinaccm.com/4S/4S16/4S1607/news/20081111/105956.asp Report Summary Internet Internet user penetration in Central America and the Caribbean stands a t roughly 18%, only just over a quarter of what it is in the USA and Canada. In S outh America, about 25% of the population uses the Internet. Challenges to I nternet growth include poor fixed-line infrastructure, low PC penetration, and widespread poverty. On the positive side, the broadband market has been growing steadily in most countries, and there is considerable room for expansio n. Although the situation varies considerably from country to country, the region as a whole is a fertile ground for broadband investment. WiMAX (News - Alert) and trip le play are becoming increasingly popular. Broadband At the end of 2007, broadband subscribers in Latin America had grown to 19.4 million, a huge increase compared with 2.7 million in 2003. Nevertheles s, in terms of penetration rate, the number of broadband lines per 100 inhabi tants was only 3.4, considerably less than the world's estimated 5.9 lines. The poor uptake of broadband in the region can be attributed to several factors, the main one being the high prices charged by providers, which in many countries have a virtual monopoly in their areas of operation. Other factors incl ude low PC penetration, insufficient fixed-line infrastructure, highly unequal income distribution, a lack of economies of scale, and regulatory hurdles. Convergence (News - Alert) Convergence offers promising prospects in Latin America, a continent wi th about 570 million people, a soaring broadband sector, low teledensity, relati vely high TV penetration, and a growing VoIP market. VoIP has gained huge popular ity in most countries throughout the region since it dramatically cuts the cos ts of long-distance calling. It has been combined with broadband services by a number of operators but, in a few markets, especially those that are not priva tised and/or liberalised, governments have regulated VoIP or prohibited it al together in an attempt to protect the incumbent. This report provides 180 statistical tables relating to Internet and br oadband markets of 26 Latin American countries, and is extracted from the full annual market reports. For a full description, commentary, analysis and foreca sting, see the original reports. Notes on scenario forecasts Throughout the report, BuddeComm provides a number of scenario forecast s. The following notes provide some background to our scenario forecasting met hodology: This report includes what we term scenario forecasts. By describing lon g-range scenarios we identify a band within which we expect market growth to oc cur. The associated text describes what we see as the most likely growth trend w ithin this band. The projections shown in the tables in this report are based on our own historical information, as well as on telecommunication sector statisti cs from official and non-official, national and international sources. We assum e a possible deviation of 15-20% around this data. All statistics for GDP, revenue, etc are shown in US$, in order to main tain consistency within and between markets. At the same time we acknowledge that this can introduce some irregularities. Search more reports,click: http://search.chinaccm.com/ As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments. |