5 Jul 2011Ecuador Broadband Overview

Ecuador has one of the smallest telecommunications markets in Latin America, and growth in the sector has been very slow. The market was liberalized in 1997, but competition has been hampered by the dominance of the two state-owned companies. The government had planned to privatize these companies by the end of 1997, however repeated privatisation attempts have failed. In October 2008, the two state-owned telecommunications companies merged to create a new state-owned telco with nationwide coverage.

Fixed line teledensity in Ecuador is one of the lowest in South America. The new incumbent, Corporacion Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (CNT) had ambitious plans to raise it from 14 per cent in 2008 to 19 per cent in 2010. However, at the end of 2010, fixed line teledensity was still below 15 per cent. The main broadband technology is cable, but ADSL and wireless technologies such as WiMAX are also available. Following CNT’s campaign to increase broadband penetration through network expansion and cheaper ADSL broadband packages, in 2009 a major shift took place from dial-up to broadband. By March 2010, only 3 per cent of Ecuador’s Internet subscribers were on dial-up, down from 51 per cent at end 2008.

The mobile telephony market is extremely dynamic, and penetration is higher than the regional average. Mobile broadband has been extremely successful, with the number of mobile broadband customers being equivalent to more than half the number of fixed-line broadband subscribers by mid 2010.