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Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2011
27
From the
americas
Writing in
SearchTelecom.com,
Jessica Scarpati went on
to consider the prospects for telecom operators interested
in Latin America’s potential. Having only so many new
revenue opportunities in mature markets like North America,
these operators, she said, are trying “desperately” to drum
up new services to compensate for a saturated market
weighed down by sluggish growth in average revenue per
user (ARPU). (“Latin America Poised for Growth, Challenged
by Lack of Undersea Cable,” 5
th
October)
Latin America is clearly a land of opportunity for operators
in that situation. According to the latest Visual Networking
Index released by Cisco Systems, consumer and business
Internet protocol (IP) traffic there is expected to show a
51% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the period
2009-2014, faster than in any other region.
This puts Latin America ahead of the Middle East and
Africa, each with a 45% CAGR over the five years. Mobile
data will likely be the fastest-growing category of IP traffic
almost everywhere, with Latin America expected to achieve
a 111% CAGR through 2014.
The outlook for Latin America is too good to have escaped
notice. But, vis-à-vis North America, Asia and Europe,
the region is woefully underserved by undersea cable.
“There are not that many systems that go down there,” said
Michael Wheeler, vice president of the global IP network
business unit at NTT America Inc (New York). “And a lot of
them [run only up and down] the Atlantic seaboard.”
Ms Scarpati confirmed that – compared with the large amount
of undersea cable between California and Japan, say, or
New York and Britain – the submarine cable system landing in
South America appears paltry, particularly below the Equator.
She wrote, “Central America and the Caribbean fare better,
benefiting from their proximity to North America and the
ample number of landing points on the various islands.”
While an ocean-floor cable network is not a project to be
❖
❖
undertaken lightly, to those operators seriously interested
in tapping the potential of Latin America it may present the
least challenging approach. New Jersey-based telecom
consultant TomNolle told
SearchTelecom
that, throughout
many parts of the region, fixed-line isn’t always financially
or logistically feasible, and wireless is constrained by
line-of-sight. Accordingly, he said, undersea cable is
the best option to connect countries within Central and
South America and to the rest of the world.
“If you’re going through the jungles of Panama or
northern Colombia, I wouldn’t want to try to install cables
through that mess,” Mr Nolle said. “At that point, it would
be cheaper to start at a place like Bogotá and [trench]
undersea cable.”