Latin American GSM players express confidence about 3G migration path at GSM > Americas congress

POST EVENT PRESS RELEASE
GSM > Americas
5-6 December 2007
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The 11th annual GSM Americas congress was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 5-6 December 2007, attracting a significantly larger audience than at previous versions of this event. Just under 550 participants gained from two days of high-value presentations, panel discussions, Q&A sessions and networking opportunities all designed to facilitate the transfer of commercially valuable insights across national borders and around the mobile services ecosystem in Latin America. 35 of the Latin America region’s telecoms operators and telecoms groups with a Latin American footprint were represented, with delegates assembling from Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil, Bolivia, Haiti, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles.

Key attendance stats:

• 538 attendees
• 57% operator delegate attendance
• 35 countries represented
• 34% board / director level delegate attendance

As in previous years, GSM Americas was co-located with a GSM Association Latin America Plenary Meeting. Another key partner in the success of this year’s event was 3G Americas, whose Executive Briefing was incorporated into the day two plenary session of the conference. Moderated by Erasmo Rojas, 3G Americas’ Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Executive Briefing session featured operator and analyst roundtable discussions focussed on the seamless deployment of GSM and its evolution to 3G and beyond in the Americas. Operator panellists included: Marcelo Erlich, CEO of Uruguayan cellco Ancel; Gustavo Marambio Lopez, CTO of the Chilean mobile business unit of Telefonica; Marco Quatorze, in charge of value-added services and Brazil’s Claro. The roundtable participants echoed the bullish note struck by the Executive Briefing opening speaker, 3G Americas President Chris Pearson, who predicted further success for the GSM family of technologies in the region. Pearson spoke about how operators can expect to drive down the cost of voice traffic by as much as 60% and data traffic by 45-70% on a fully loaded 3G network. Pearson’s presentation was nicely complemented by input from Ancel’s Erlich, whose detailed case study exemplified how operators will leverage W-CDMA and HSPA to open new revenue streams as well as achieving greater efficiencies across the business.

It was noted throughout the conference that Latin American mobile markets are set to become more competitive. In many markets, the imminent imposition of Mobile Number Portability looks set to stimulate higher levels of customer churn. Several conference speakers spoke about the arising need to identify and keep the highest value customers and to maximise the contribution of those customers by ensuring that they are encouraged to make more use of the richer value-added data services enabled by 3G. A further boost to levels of competition in some markets has been relatively late liberalisation in countries dominated by a monopoly telecoms service provider. Suriname is one such example. The mobile arena has opened up this year to new market entrants and Telesur, the incumbent carrier and its mobile business unit has responded with improved customer service and a push to refine the company’s branding. Telesur CEO Dirk Currie was on hand to discuss these changes via his multimedia presentation to conference delegates.

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The commitment to this event by the GSM Association Latin America was shown on the first morning of the conference, with GSM LA Executive Director Juan Carlos Jil moderating the plenary session and directing questions to a strong panel of operator representatives which included: Alvaro Pereira de Moraes, TIM Brasil's Commercial Operations Director; Rodrigo Cardenas, Entel PCS (Chiles) Technical Evolution Director; Daniel González, Telecom Personal Paraguay's Commercial Director; Adolfo Arias, Director of the Telecommunications Services Divison of ICE Costa Rica (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad).

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For 11 years, GSM Americas has been an important component of the Informa Telecoms & Media GSM>3G World Series, a global suite of cellular industry discussion and networking events, each of which is held at the heart of a key emerging markets region. Across the world, the distinction between the fixed and mobile worlds has become increasingly blurred. In many markets, incumbent fixed line operators are integrating their previously quite separate mobile business units ever more tightly into the parent company, thereby achieving cost savings as well as readying themselves to offer convenient bundles of network-agnostic services. At the same time, pure- play mobile operators are seeking to compete in the home broadband market either through partnerships with existing wireline telcos or through the acquisition of their own fixed-line network assets. We can also expect to see an increasing number of previously purely fixed line businesses developing some kind of mobility proposition. Mindful of this, and of the accelerating convergence of the telecoms and IT/Internet worlds, Informa Telecoms & Media is seeking actively to broaden the appeal of all World Series events and create in each case a meeting point for every kind of operator and service provider. Delegates are sure to gain more than ever from This suite of events has therefore been re-branded ‘Com World Series’ to reflect this increased openness, inclusiveness and network technology agnosticism. In the case of the Americas event, this will mean reaching out far more actively beyond the traditional core audience of GSM cellular operators to welcome, in addition, delegations from the region’s incumbent carriers, cable MSOs and all other providers of voice and data services.

Next year’s GSM Americas will therefore be incorporated into the umbrella brand ‘Americas Com’. The event will take place once again in the second half of the year and in Rio de Janeiro, which stands as by far the most popular venue for the conference in recent years. The exact date will be confirmed and announced by the end of December 2007.

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For more information on the event, programme content or to find out more about getting involved next year, please contact Joe Willcox at email:joe.willcox@informa.com or on telephone +44(0)20 7017 5066.

We hope you can join us next year!