5G Americas: LatAm LTE penetration surpasses 20% in 2016

LTE penetration in Latin America stood at an average of 22.5% at the end of 2016, up 8.3 percentage points from 14.8% in 2Q16, with Uruguay leading with 79.6% and four other markets above the regional average, according to think tank 5G Americas.

Citing data from 451 Research, Carrier & Asociados, Cepal, ITC SA, Ovum, Teleco and The CIU, 5G Americas, attributed growth to the increasing awarding of spectrum particularly the 700MHz band for rural coverage and more LTE devices available.

Uruguay had more than double the amount of LTE penetration as its closest rival Argentina (36%). Next follows Chile with 30.8%, Brazil (28.9%) and Costa Rica (27.8%).

Argentina has seen impressive growth in LTE rising from fifth place at the end of 2015 with 10.39% and overtaking Chile to take second place in only two years since the launch of LTE services nationwide. The country saw a 14.3 percentage points increase from 2Q16 to 4Q16.

Uruguay moved from 55.8% in 1Q16 to almost 80%. However, the country is still to see the launch of LTE-Advanced services with carrier aggregation, which are commercially available in Chile and Peru since last year. The high penetration of fiber optic infrastructure in the country and a consumer predisposed to early adoption of technology point to LTE-A being launched in the short term.

Those with the lowest LTE penetration were El Salvador (1.0%), Nicaragua (2.2%), Guatemala (2.6%) and Honduras (2.8%).

Some of those countries have been slow to tender 4G LTE spectrum. Last September, Guatemala's regulator SIT announced plans to tender the 900MHz and AWS bands. El Salvador is also still to tender its 4G spectrum.

In between there was a range between Mexico (21%) and Colombia (18.7%), and Venezuela (6.3%) and the Dominican Republic (5.3%).

Bolivia was the only country that registered a drop in LTE penetration from Q2 to Q4, falling 0.4 percentage points to 14.1%. However, state telco Entel has been moving forward, offering a fiber-based quad play package earlier this month.

Paraguay grew just 2.1 percentage points to 13.3%. LTE spectrum was only awarded at the end of 2015 and the first deployments took place in April. Tigo has said it aims to reach a little more than half of the country's 250 districts by the end of 2017.