LTE-A activated in 5 new LatAm markets in 2018

LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks were activated for the first time in five new Latin American countries in 2018, namely Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Guatemala.

As a result, LTE-A networks are now available in 13 Latin American markets, according to a 5G Americas survey based on information from regulatory agencies and telcos.

Of the countries in which LTE-A networks were deployed last year, three of them - Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama - licensed new spectrum to accommodate the technology.

LTE-A is an evolution of the 4G LTE technology, defined in the specifications of Release 10 of the 3GPP group. It allows offering peak download speeds that exceed 1Gbps, and enables more efficient use of the radio spectrum, thanks to the carrier aggregation (CA) technique, among other advantages.

LTE-A networks have not yet been deployed in Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela.