Wireless Federation

Open Mobile may be the first to launch 4G LTE services in Latin America

On 10.28.11, In Mobile Operators, By Editor

Puerto Rican network operator, Open Mobile, is reportedly planning to launch 4G LTE mobile broadband services in Latin America along with Sweden based Ericsson, a world-leading provider of telecommunications equipment and related services to mobile and fixed network operators globally. As per reports, Neville Cruz, CTO, Open Mobile said that the companies have worked closely to rapidly build a high-quality 4G LTE network and that the LTE rollout would continue in metropolitan areas during the remainder of 2011 and early 2012.

Sources claim that Frank Bell, President, Open Mobile has said that being at the forefront of broadband evolution means that the customers in Puerto Rico will be the first in Latin America to benefit from this groundbreaking technology. He added that having an experienced partner in LTE deployment like Ericsson is a key step towards bringing their customers the fastest mobile broadband network. Industry sources reveal that of the many networks aiming to launch LTE services in Latin America, US-based AT&T and Mexican-based Claro have been targeting Puerto Rico for the launch of their services by early 2012.

America Movil and Citigroup to launch mobile banking services (Latin America)

On 10.19.11, In Mobile Operators, By Editor

America Movil, Mexico based wireless service provider, has reportedly entered into a joint venture with Citigroup to provide mobile banking services in Latin America. The $50 million venture has been named ‘Transfer’ and is expected to begin in Mexico by early next year.

As per reports, the joint venture will enable customers to open bank accounts, transfer money, withdraw cash from the ATMs along with shop, receive payments and pay bills via their mobile handsets. The service will initially be offered to clients of Citi’s Mexican subsidiary, Banamex and Telcel.

Manuel Medina-Mora, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Latin America & Mexico of Citigroup Inc. has reportedly said that the governments could use ‘Transfer’ as a platform for making benefits available to the poor, as well as for civil service payroll.

Filed under:Mobile Operators Tagged with: America Movil • Citigroup • Latin America • Mexico • Mobile Banking • transfer

ONYX inks deal to offer Digium Communications Software and Hardware to Latin America and Caribbean

On 06.03.11, In Mobile, By Editor

ONYX Tech Distribution, a distributor of core IP Products and Computer Accessories, announced today that they are pleased to have signed an agreement to become an authorized Digium® distributor for the Latin American and Caribbean regions.

“We are excited to add the Digium product line to our IP telephony portfolio of brands”

“We are excited to add the Digium product line to our IP telephony portfolio of brands,” said Redford Roach, Director of ONYX Tech Distribution. “Digium products complement the lines that we offer to our channels in Latin America, especially those resellers servicing small to medium sized businesses and providing high-end business phone systems that companies could not generally afford with traditional PBX costs. Our customers, corporations with multiple-branches nationally or internationally, are adopting IP technology rapidly. It’s an exploding digital universe. We know IP telephony is the future of enterprise telecommunications, and Digium is IP telephony.”

Digium is the creator, sponsor and driving force behind Asterisk®, the most widely used open source telephony software. The company’s product lines include a wide range of hardware and software to enable resellers and businesses to implement custom solutions or to design their own voice over IP (VoIP) systems. Digium also provides the award-winning Switchvox family of turnkey unified communications (UC) solutions for small and medium enterprises.

Roach continued: “Being a Digium distributor and partner will boost our strategy and focus of IP technology in our markets. We are excited about the opportunity to supply Latin American companies with the finest in IP-PBX and voice technology products.”

“Organizations in nearly every country of the world have chosen to create business phone systems based on Asterisk and Digium hardware because they can be customized to meet nearly any telephony requirements, work with existing phones and are very cost-effective,” said Gayle Magee, director of worldwide distribution sales at Digium. “Partnering with ONYX Tech Distribution will allow us to better access and serve businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean with Asterisk and Digium hardware, as well as our Switchvox family of unified communications solutions for companies that want an easy, out-of-the-box solution.”

About Digium

Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, created, owns and is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Since its founding in 1999, Digium has become the open source alternative to proprietary communication providers, with offerings that cost as much as 80 percent less. Digium offers Asterisk software free to the open source community and offers Switchvox IP PBX software to power a broad family of products for small, medium and large businesses. The company’s product line includes a wide range of hardware and software to enable resellers and customers to implement turnkey VoIP systems or to design their own custom telephony solutions. More information is available at http://www.digium.com.

The Digium logo, Digium, Asterisk, Asterisk SCF, Switchvox, Asterisk Business Edition, AsteriskNOW, Asterisk Appliance and the Asterisk logo are trademarks of Digium, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

www.digium.com

About ONYX Tech Distribution

ONYX Tech Distribution services resellers, VARS and original equipment manufacturers in Latin America.

Onyx provides specialized lines in IP Products, Computer Hardware, and Accessories. Onyx’s multi-market expertise, focused account reps, service and ongoing educational programs, provides a one-stop-stop solution to its customer base. This level of all-around support enables ONYX resellers and dealers to become pioneers (and beneficiaries) of the new technological revolutions, in IP technologies, computer Onyx’s effort is focused on creating, building, maintaining, and improving efficient, profitable, and mutually beneficial relationships with their brands, revolutionary technologies, and channel partners. www.onyxtd.com

Filed under:Mobile Tagged with: Caribbean • Latin America • Mobile

Telefonica partners with Cellcrypt to launch encrypted Voice services (Latin America)

On 05.20.11, In Mobile, By Editor

Cellcrypt, the leading provider of encrypted voice calling on mobile phones, today announced that it reached an agreement with Telefónica, one of the largest telecom operators in the world, to include Cellcrypt Mobile™ in their product and service portfolio across the 13 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean where Telefónica operates.

Cellcrypt Mobile is used by governments and corporations globally and is a downloadable application for off-the-shelf smartphones that provides end-to-end encryption of voice calls over cellular (2G, 3G), Wi-Fi and satellite networks. Cellcrypt Mobile is certified to U.S. government National Institute of Standards and Technology FIPS 140-2 security standard and has been awarded the CESG Claims Tested Mark (CCTM) from the U.K. government’s information assurance authority.

The announcement is part of an extensive partnership agreement that allows Telefónica to promote, sell and support Cellcrypt Mobile and associated technologies within certain countries.

As Governments and Corporations increasingly use cell phones for operational and administrative communications they have an increased need for government-grade protection from increasingly sophisticated unauthorized interception threats. This protection is required end-to-end so as to assure users that they control the security of calls along all points of the call path between caller and recipient, and have adequately mitigated risks in compliance with internal security policies.

Cellcrypt’s software provides end-to-end voice call encryption on smartphones making secure calling with high voice quality and low latency as easy as a normal cell phone call. Utilizing the IP data channel, secure calls can be made using both Telefónica’s cellular and Wi-Fi® networks from the same handset. As a software-only solution, deployment to personnel can take as little as 10 minutes anywhere in the world. Only Internet access is required.

“We are delighted to be able to offer our government and corporate customers an end-to-end encrypted voice calling capability with strong, accredited cryptography and requiring no physical hardware. This is important as our customers have a need for rapid and flexible deployment and redeployment,” said Raul Fraile, Deputy Director Business Development, Applications and Partner Relationships of Telefónica Latinoamérica, “and the ability to have interoperability between several different brands of popular smartphones is also very important to more broadly meet the diverse needs of our customers.“

“Cell phones are the most convenient, and often only, option for many operational and administrative communications across governments and business – just as they are in our personal lives,” said Richard Greco, CEO of Cellcrypt. “One problem with cell phone eavesdropping is that you rarely know it has happened. Rather than hope that the inevitable sensitive and confidential conversations that occur on cell phones are not compromised, this solution means that Telefónica customers can depend on their cell phones to be a secure and exploit their mobility, convenience, ease-of-use and interoperability as an important communications asset.”

Telefónica is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world in terms of number of accesses and market capitalization. Its activities are centered mainly on the fixed and mobile telephony businesses with broadband as the key tool for the development of both. The company has a customer base of more than 290 million customers around the world. Telefónica has a strong presence in Europe and Latin America, where the company focuses an important part of its growth strategy. Telefónica is a 100% listed company, with more than 1.5 million direct shareholders.

For more information please visit: www.telefonica.com.

Filed under:Mobile Tagged with: 1 • Argentina • Brazil • Caribbean • Chile • Colombia • Costa Rica • Dominican Republic • Ecuador • Guatemala • Latin America • operator • Panama • Peru • Puerto Rico • Telefonica • Venezuela

Samsung revenues to cross $10 bn in 2012 (Latin America)

On 05.20.11, In Mobile, By Editor

Samsung Electronics in Latin American intends to reach US$10 billion revenues in markets by 2012.

Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung has stated that the company believes more business opportunities will emerge in the regio. Samsung expects US$8.5 billion in annual sales in the Central and South American markets by the end of this year, and that will be increased to US$10 billion next year.

Samsung operates two manufacturing plants in Mexico and Brazil, and has three parts suppliers in Argentina.

CEO added that Samsung should grow further, which means that they should spend big in pushing for strong expansions in emerging markets when developed markets are showing signs of stagnating.

Filed under:Mobile Tagged with: Argentina • Brazil • Latin America • Mexico • Mobile

Celistics names Nokia’s Gallego as CCO for LatAm

On 05.13.11, In Mobile, By Editor

Celistics has appointed Juan Maria Gallego-Toledo as its chief commercial officer.

In his new position, Gallego will head the growth strategy for Celistics’ development of retail channels, physical and virtual, across Latin American markets.

Gallego’s main objective will be to strengthen Celistics’ expansion efforts with the creation of new retail distribution channels. Gallego will oversee new direct retail distribution models as well as monitoring product sales and services for mobile operators. Gallego brings to Celistics over 17 years of experience from Nokia.

Gallego began his career at Nokia as director of sales for Latin America in 1994 within the area of business development for mobile phones. In 2003 he joined Nokia Spain, where he served as global account director of Telefonica Moviles. Before his appointment in Celistics and since 2006, Gallego served as general director of Telefonica for Nokia in Spain.

In 2008 he assumed responsibility for the development and implementation of Nokia’s business strategy in China.

Filed under:Mobile Tagged with: China • Latin America • Mobile • Spain

PC sales to grow by 13% Latin America

On 05.13.11, In Mobile, By Editor

A recent research has revealed that the sale of computers, including desktops, notebooks and netbooks will this year rise 13 percent in Latin America.

The total sale of these products should reach the mark of 36.3 million units, with sales volumes of netbooks up 29 percent fron the year before, encouraged by state education policies in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela.

The forecast shows the sale of 7.4 million units. Notebook sales will maintain their high growth rates, an increase of 18 percent over 2010, reaching 13.1 million units sold. For their part, desktops should face slower growth in the medium and long term, only 3 percent over 2010.

The demand from home and corporate users will bring the number of desktops sold to about 15.7 million units.

Filed under:Mobile Tagged with: Argentina • Brazil • Latin America • Mobile • Venezuela

Telecom Italia says no plans to expand LatAm presence

On 05.12.11, In Mobile, By Editor

Telecom Italia (TI) chief executive Franco Bernabe has stated that the company does not plan to enter new markets in Latin America, but rather focuses on expanding its businesses in Brazil and Argentina.

According to him, their presence in Brazil and Argentina, which are large markets, require a lot of investment in infrastructure and that means we have a lot on our hands to think about geographic expansion.

TI has subsidiaries in Brazil (TIM Brazil), as well as Argentina and Paraguay, through its stake in Telecom Argentina. TIM will invest in fixed-line infrastructure in Brazil through its fibre optic unit Intelig to support the growth of its mobile business.

Filed under:Mobile Tagged with: Argentina • Brazil • Italy • Latin America • operator • Paraguay

Latin American operators take m-banking user base to grow by 65% in 2010/15

On 05.12.11, In Mobile, By Editor

A recent research has revealed that the number of mobile banking users in Latin America will grow 65 percent between 2010 and 2015, from around 18 million users to over 140 million users.

Researchers believe that Latin America has achieved the right conditions to smoothly increase the uptake of mobile financial services, including banking and payments.

Banking penetration is low in Latin America, but by 2015 85 percent of the total population will be an active user of a mobile device, making those devices a clear entry point for adjacent services, such as payments, banking and remittances.

Researchers reveal that technological advances are making the fulfillment of the promise of a broad mobile banking and payment service a real possibility. Also, all larger markets in Latin America have more than 35 percent of their population under the age of 24, making this the perfect time for operators to focus on mobile banking services. Mobile operators will benefit from mobile banking in multiple ways – from more airtime purchases, more billable network traffic, such as data and SMS, and an increase in customer loyalty, thus improving the churn rate.

They can help the system to be faster providing back-end services through their network, handling large amounts of data smoothly and bringing to their network handsets that are payment friendly by partnering with payment vendors, such as Visa or MasterCard.

Latin American operators can help the system to gain traction by leveraging
its network of users and resellers to push for the service. Operators can also make the process cheaper by cutting paperwork and economic inefficiencies.

Filed under:Mobile Tagged with: Latin America • Mobile

Synchronica signs expansion deal with Latin American operator

On 05.09.11, In Mobile, By Editor

Synchronica has inked an expansion contract with a tier-one multinational mobile operator group in Latin America.

The contract will help Synchronica extend the functionality of the groups’ existing mobile IM services to provide push e-mail and synchronisation, and the service will be hosted and maintained by Synchronica.

Synchronica will receive additional recurring revenue from a monthly fee per active e-mail user. The enlarged service is scheduled to be deployed across all of the groups’ subsidiaries in Latin America, and will allow subscribers to access an e-mail address provided by the operators’ webmail service from any mobile phone.

In addition, users will be able to connect with mainstream consumer e-mail communities such as Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo, as well as synchronise enterprise e-mail systems such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino.

Filed under:Mobile Tagged with: Latin America • operator