Latin America Turns Challenges into Opportunity through Innovation

The Long Awaited NGT Summit in Panama unites world leaders to build Latin
America infrastructure

Latin America is home to the "B" in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) quartet of leading emerging economies, but is still relatively small as a regional telecom service market, accounting for only 10 percent of total global revenues. A combination of large geographical size and population, economic resources, growth, telecom liberalization and investment are moving the market forward. Big international carriers such as Telefonica and BT certainly see the region’s potential with large acquisitions in the area.

Led by Miguel Angel Garay – CEO Central America, AMNET Telecommunications, a consortium of over fifty world telecom leaders united this week in Panama at the illustrious NGT Summit and outlined the ethos that innovation is the key to exploit the inevitable growth.

A committee set up by the NGT, featuring Pedro Planas, CTO Latin America, Telefonica Media; Humberto Roca, CTO, Antel; and Robert Masse, CTO, Telefonica Del Sur, gave their viewpoints on Latin America Market Environment, turning challenges into opportunity through innovation.
“Nowadays, service providers face a more and more challenging market environment.” Stated the panel “Current macroeconomic ecosystems, competitive pressures and more demanding customers push service providers to differentiate by being more innovative”.

But will integrating value-added services into their portfolios keep high efficiency and profitability levels as demanded by their shareholders? Or will it redistribute wealth to software developers as it has in more saturated markets such as Europe?

The consortium announced the importance of new technologies, such as the much talked about LTE to push the network and reduce the risk of operators being relegated to the sidelines as bit-pipe providers.

“A meeting such as this is crucial for the developing market in Latin America. Investment in new technologies and infrastructure in the region will increase employment and will send a strong message to foreign investors." Paul Southwell – Director for Latin America at the NGT Summit.

This is an exciting time for the region, and to capitalize on such growth opportunities requires the entire industry to pull together, and as such a secondary meeting has been agreed with the NGT Summit on May 11th 2010.