Posted on Monday, January 28, 2019Last week, Telefonica announced it was selling its Guatemala and El Salvador properties. No surprise there. But to America Movil! Big surprise. These two operators definitely travel to the beat of a different drum. This Telegeography article gives the details: US$333M for Guatemala and US$315M for El Salvador. The Guatemala deal closed already because the […]
Read More Posted on Tuesday, December 04, 2018The alternate title for this rant is “A bad idea whose time has come again”: Italy toys with the idea of a nationalized broadband carrier. Reuters reported that “The far-right League and its coalition partner, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, want to create a company that combines the networks of former monopoly Telecom Italia and smaller, […]
Read More Posted on Friday, October 19, 2018A few weeks ago, I attended the Colombian Engineers’ Association (ACIEM) annual telecom conference. I am on the program committee so somewhat honor-bound to be there, but I would go anyway because it is one of the best small conferences of the year. Every time there is a C-level panel from the major operators and […]
Read More Posted on Tuesday, September 04, 2018Are telcos innovative? I do not remember when I saw this debate recently. I think it was a TMForum webinar. I was reminded again of this recently seeing a ranking of innovative companies in Colombia. None were telcos or even in the telecom industry. I am getting to be ‘older’ and my memory is unreliable, […]
Read More Posted on Thursday, August 23, 2018To start, let me acknowledge the problem: the business case for broadband in emerging markets gets very difficult the further away you get from major economic centers. Thus, Facebook’s experimentation with exotic technologies like this week’s 5G from hovering airships. The challenge is obvious. Emerging markets are often characterized by low average incomes exacerbated by […]
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