Although the Argentine economy has an advanced telecom landscape, a considerable amount of investment is still necessary to improve services in rural areas. In this context, the government has begun a new National Broadband Plan to meet the surging demand and improve services in the select parts of the country.
It is reported that Argentina is one of the most versatile mobile markets in the Latin American region. It ranks third following Brazil and Mexico. However, mobile penetration in the country has dropped over the years owing to a reduced number of subscribers after a period of steady growth, media reports said.
In 2019, the ARS4.53 billion programme that was launched to extend broadband services to rural areas in the country was nearly complete. The programme was managed by the state-owned infrastructure operator ARSAT.
In another development, Telecom Argentina has adopted Open Caching CDN solutions from Cisco, Qwilt and Digital Alpha. Telecom Argentina is one of the largest communications providers in the country. The adoption of Open Caching CDN solution now makes it the first service provider to launch this new business model in Argentina.
Roberto Daniel Nobile, CEO, Telecom Argentina, told the media, “Our unified leadership and focus helped us reach an agreement and plan for deployment in record time with introductions, presentations, evaluations, technical deep dives and commercial negotiations handled via Webex due to pandemic travel restrictions.” It is reported that the commercial availability of 5G might not be available before 2021. That said, economic and political distress has had its fair share of impact on the industry’s investment and improvements.