Snapshot: El Salvador’s telecom market

With a population of around 6.5mn people, El Salvador had some 11.3mn mobile telephone lines in operation as of the end of March this year, or around 1.73 lines per person.

Residential landlines, on the other hand, reached just 580,519 accesses, a much smaller footprint, even considering the decline of the technology in Latin America.

These are some of the takeaways from the latest quarterly report from telecom and power regulator Siget, sourced from information provided by the telecom operators in the country.

The figures in the report include fixed and mobile telephony, internet services, pay TV, browsing speeds, and number portability, among others. Siget said the Q1 numbers are still under review and being consolidated and are therefore considered preliminary.

BNamericas takes a look at the main statistics and compares them with the situation 12 months earlier.

MOBILE TELEPHONY

El Salvador ended March with 11.3mn mobile telephony lines in operation, with an overwhelming 88.4% in the prepaid format. 

In the last 12 months to end-March, the country gained roughly 1.13mn mobile lines, over 988,000 of which were prepaid and 149,000 postpaid.

Of total mobile users, close to 4.72mn enjoyed speeds considered to be broadband by the regulator as of March 31, up from 4.50mn on the same date of 2021.

Siget does not identify the types of technology used in the country, but says that 92% of the population had access to “at least” 3G services in March, up from 91% the year before.

Meanwhile, around 93% of the country’s territory had mobile cellular coverage in March, which was flat year-on-year, Siget said.

The leading mobile players in the country are Millicom’s Tigo, América Móvil’s Claro and Digicel.

Claro is the overall leader in El Salvador telecom market, with around 86% of the fixed telephony market, 35% of the mobile market, 58.8% in residential internet and 50.8% in pay TV, according to Fitch. 

The company has US$137mn earmarked for investments in the country. 

Luxembourg-based telecoms group Millicom ended March with 2.90mn mobile customers in El Salvador, according to the company's data. By the end of June, the figure had reached 2.96mn. El Salvador represents 8% of Millicom’s revenues.

The group also has US$700mn earmarked for investments in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in the next two years. 

In January Telefónica closed the sale of its Movistar subsidiary to UK-based General International Telecom El Salvador for US$139mn.

Digicel, on the other hand, is focusing on the Caribbean and El Salvador after exiting Panama, where C&W Panamá's acquisition of Claro led to market dynamics Digicel considered uncompetitive.

The company has invested US$400mn in El Salvador since 2019.

INTERNET

At the end of the first quarter, El Salvador had 830,512 internet subscribers, following the addition of over 167,000 in the 12 months to that date, according to Siget's report.

Of the total, 627,253 were fixed internet customers, up from 575,376 on March 31, 2021.

More than half of the actual customer base, 394,779, were connected via copper wire technology (DSL). The remaining accesses were via cable modem lines (221,387), fiber (10,884), with just 203 classified as "other wired technologies."

Around 423,000 of the fixed internet subscribers had speeds between 2Mbps and 10Mbps at end-March.

All technologies saw growth in the 12 months to end-March, with fiber gaining around 2,000 subscribers. 

El Salvador still has one of the lowest fiber broadband penetration rates in Latin America.

The country also had 27,300km of fiber optics networks deployed, up from 23,931km at end-March 2021.

PAY-TV

Finally, pay TV (“multichannel TV”) subscriptions totaled 592,465 on March 31, up 10% year-on-year. The country is one of the few markets in the region where the service continues to grow, let alone at double-digit rates.

Of total pay-TV accesses, 337,830 were cable TV, 254,185 were satellite (DTH) and 450 fiber (IPTV), up 10.2%, 9.7% and 4.4% year-on-year, respectively.

Other data in the Q1 report can be found here, in Spanish.