Venezuela’s fixed-line market continues to confound expectations with continued high growth even as themobile market is approaching 100% penetration. The major driver behind this is government-ownedincumbent Compañía Anónima de Teléfonos de Venezuela (CANTV) which has made its policy totarget lower income subscribers. While wealthy customers already have fixed-line services, many poorerVenezuelans could not afford to contract a fixed line, and in many cases the fixed-line network did notreach remote communities. CANTV has expanded its network as well as introducing a range of tariffsunder the Tarifa Solidaria scheme, with two prepaid and two postpaid options available. Through this themarket has seen continued growth with 6.3mn lines in service at the end of 2008.
Having significantly expanded our mobile coverage in the last quarter, BMI has focused on the fixed-lineand broadband markets in this latest update. This includes more in depth coverage of both markets and agreater range of data available. We have also included a section on significant developments in the fixedlineand broadband markets. This has included triple-play launches and new products offered by thedifferent operators in the market. While mobile data analysis has been left untouched, we have includedthe latest data from operators and updated our mobile market overview to include data to the end of 2008.
With end of 2008 data available from Conatel, the regulator, we have updated forecasts accordingly, andour mobile forecasts have been revised downwards slightly. It seems that the growing focus on postpaidsubscribers has led to a market slowdown. However, fixed-line and broadband connections bothsurpassed expectations, passing 6mn and 1mn connections, respectively. BMI has further revised fixedlineforecasts upwards with the expectations that the penetration rate will actually reach 24% in 2012,before beginning a slight decline, despite continually increasing subscriber numbers. BMI correctlyanticipated that broadband connections would reach 1mn by the end of 2008, although our expectationswere a little lower than the final number. We have adjusted our future expectations to take into accountthe increasing number of triple-play packages in the market, as well as the expansion of the network.
BMI now anticipates there will be over 3mn broadband subscribers in Venezuela in 2013.
Meanwhile, Venezuela was one of the few markets in Latin America to see no change to its position inour Business Environment Rankings, remaining in 10th place. With low country risk and regulatoryscores, it is Venezuela’s large population, relative to the markets placed below it, and establishedcompetition that keeps it from tumbling to the bottom of our rankings.
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