Snapshot: The state of Uruguay’s telecom

Virtually universalized in the country, 4G LTE technology now covers 89.3% of Uruguay’s territory, up from 64% in June 2019.

With a population of roughly 3.5mn, Uruguay ended June with 4.47mn subscriptions to mobile services, a little more than the 4.41mn reported in the year-before period, statistics released by regulator Ursec show. 

Total mobile accesses (including M2M connections and modems) amounted to 5.33mn, up from 5.06mn in June 2019. Prepaid users made up 51.9% of the total.

State-run telco Antel had 51.5% of the overall mobile accesses and 46.3% of the mobile lines subscriptions. The company is followed by Telefónica’s Movistar (30.5% and 33%, respectively) and by América Móvil’s Claro (18% and 20.8%).

According to Uruguayan paper Búsqueda, citing sources close to the matter, representatives of Telecom Argentina and Grupo Clarín, the largest media conglomerate in Argentina, seek to increase their investments in Uruguay and are mulling bidding for Movistar.

Telefónica is in a process of divesting and scaling back its footprint in LatAm to focus on its four core markets of Spain, Brazil, Germany and the UK.

The country had 8,239 radio base stations (antennas) installed by end-June, 3,385 of which were 4G LTE. Antel owned 59.3% of all antennas, followed by Movistar (20.4%) and Claro (20.3%).

According to the regulator, the mobile industry reported revenue of 12.3bn pesos (US$282mn) in the first semester, up from the 11.8bn pesos in the year-before period.

FIXED BROADBAND

Uruguay had 1.03mn fixed broadband connections at June-end, up from around 995,000 the year before, with fiber accounting for 79% of the total, compared to 74% in June last year.

Next came DSL cable, with some 171,042 connections at-June end, down from 210,202 the year-before period.

Antel has a virtual monopoly in the fixed business, accounting for nearly all corporate and residential accesses in service.

PAY TV 

Pay-TV subscriptions continued to decline, ending June at 638,808 subscribers, compared to 688,157 the year before, and disconnections seen in the period were the largest for a semester ever. 

Coaxial cable accounted for 52.7% of total accesses and satellite TV 44.2%. 

The country’s largest pay-TV provider is AT&T’s DirecTV, with 190,740 subscriptions.

 

Ursec said there were 7,679 people working in the telecom industry, the first time this statistic was reported 

More detailed statistics on Uruguay's telecoms market can be found here.