Liberty Latin America’s Más Móvil launches commercial 5G in Panama

Liberty Latin America’s Más Móvil subsidiary officially launched its commercial 5G network in Panama.

The company held an event in Panama City on Thursday to announce the availability of the service.

The launch for end-consumers will be phased and follows a series of pilots and controlled tests carried out by the company with enterprises and selected clients earlier this year. Those pilots used temporarily assigned spectrum in the 3.5GHz band.

Más Móvil's commercial 5G network, on the other hand, is not pure 5G, also known as standalone 5G. The service relies on spectrum and infrastructure from its existing 4G LTE network.

The format is based on a technology dubbed dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), which takes advantage of spectrum that is not being used by the 4G network to offer, from a single antenna, 5G-like services.

Panama has not yet held an auction for 5G-specific bands. Regulator Asep plans to carry out a bidding process in 2025, encompassing the 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz frequencies.

COVERAGE AND INVESTMENT

Más Móvil’s commercial 5G service is available for customers with compatible devices at no extra charge. 

According to local paper La Prensa, the coverage begins with 366 points across Pamana City.

Más Móvil expects to invest US$500mn in five years in its 5G network project.

Panama’s telecom operators invested a combined US$312mn in 2023, equivalent to 28% of their revenues.

The country ended 2023 with 6.98mn mobile lines in service, of which around 5.69mn corresponded to prepaid accesses and 1.28mn to postpaid, according to the latest available figures. 

The total base was flat over end-2022.

Asep previously estimated that the telecoms sector reached US$1.10bn in combined revenues last year, some US$4.5mn more than in 2022. 

Mobile telephony is said to have accounted for 50% of the total, down from 52% in 2022. 

Following the exit of Digicel, the Panamanian mobile market is dominated by Cable & Wireless Panama (Más Móvil) and Millicom’s Tigo, the market leader.