Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

LATIN AMERICA: Cell Phones – From Status Symbol to Tool of the Masses

Marcelo Jelen*

MONTEVIDEO, Dec 9 2003 (IPS) - In the early 1990s, Uruguayan businessman Luis Rodríguez asked his secretary to call him during a meeting with some of his clients. He had a cellular telephone and he wanted to show it off.

Owning a mobile phone – as big and heavy as a brick in those days – was a status symbol, but also a magnet for thieves, according to Rodríguez, who for the past 25 years has been in the business of selling telephones and accessories.

This scenario changed quickly in Latin America, at the same time as private capital erupted in the telecommunications market. Millions of people of modest income gained access in recent years to their first telephone – and for many it was a cellular phone.

In 1990 there were just 100,000 mobile phone lines in the region, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). That figure skyrocketed to 38 million by 1999.

Today, according to private sector experts consulted by IPS, there are 120 million cell phones ringing, vibrating and playing snatches of songs and filling pockets throughout Latin America.

The telecoms experts calculate that mobile phone lines already surpass the number of fixed, or "land" lines in the region. According to the ITU, this situation has been confirmed in Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Venezuela.

The pattern is the same in most European countries (Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and those of the former Yugoslavia), but not in Canada and the United States, where fixed lines still outnumber cellular phone lines.

At one extreme in Latin America is Cuba, where the state owns and operates all telecoms services; there are 5.1 fixed lines for every 100 inhabitants and 0.07 mobile phones.

At the other is Paraguay, with a market distributed between the Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular consortium and the partnership of Telecom France and Telecom Italia Mobile. There are four times more mobile phone lines (20.4 per 100 inhabitants) than fixed lines (5.12 per 100).

The Finnish cell phone manufacturer Nokia estimates there will be 170 million mobile lines in Latin America in 2008.

Brazil had just five million mobile lines when its telecoms were privatised in 1998. From January to August that year another 5.2 million were added to that market. This year, cellular phone lines surpassed 40 million, a full one million more than fixed lines.

According to a 2000 ITU report, the combination of private ownership and growing competition put the Latin American mobile phone market among the most rapidly expanding in the world.

The economic crisis that began in the late 1990s and intensified in the past few years prompted several corporations in the mobile telephony sector, such as the U.S.-based AT&T, Verizon and SBC, to sell off shares in order to reduce their operations in the region.

Those who remained, like Spain’s Telefónica, the U.S. BellSouth and Mexico’s América Móvil, are sending signals that they have seen a light at the end of the tunnel: they are announcing new investments in the sector.

The costs of cellular telephone services were put within reach of average citizens as a result of pre-paid phone cards, which became the only way that many Latin Americans could afford a telephone at all.

With the card, the user is purchasing a set number of minutes for making phone calls, but there are no limits for receiving calls. All that is required is a minimum monthly or bimonthly purchase of minutes, and this is even within the means of many of the poorest.

In this way, the domestic employees of many middle class families had acquired cellular phones before their employers did, who had continued to rely on fixed-line telephones.

In addition to the cheaper services emerged an informal market of used and stolen cell phones, available in many Latin American capitals at street markets.

Rodríguez, the Uruguayan retailer, sells new mobile phones for around 110 dollars and used ones for 60 dollars. But at a street market in Montevideo, IPS was offered a cell phone for nine dollars, with a rechargeable battery, but no guarantees, of course.

In the Americas, says the ITU, the mobile phone is increasingly a substitute for the fixed-line telephone, more than a complement, as it is in other regions.

For residents of some countries, like Brazil and Uruguay, opting for mobile telephone services instead of fixed lines has become a way to overcome the historic gap between supply and demand for phones, especially in rural areas.

The slogan of telephone companies seems to be "no more wires", says Carlos Afonso, a Brazilian engineer, political scientist and expert in information technologies. The phone corporations "are trying to avoid using wires in the streets," he told IPS.

In 4.2 million Brazilian homes (8.8 percent of the total) the only phone is a cellular, with services covered by consortiums led by the companies Telefónica of Spain, Portugal Telecom and Telecom Italia Mobile.

But the cell phone has not meant significant changes in access to communications in the least developed countries of the region. In Haiti, the poorest nation of the Americas, there are just 0.97 fixed-line telephones and 1.11 mobile phones for every 100 people.

A cell phone today says very little about the socio-economic status of the person carrying it. For a broad swath of the Latin American population, it has become an item of primary necessity.

"Electricians, plumbers, painters and informal workers have made the cellular their mobile office, and can be reached at any moment, wherever they are, to come and do a job," says Brazilian expert Afonso.

Mexican social psychologist Eusebio Rubio told IPS that in his country, "even the street sweepers and vendors carry mobile phones, because for many of them it is a tool for work. But in some places, it is still considered a luxury."

"It was a symbol of social ascent until the late 1990s, but since then the mobile phone has become so widespread that it has lost that status. Today it is so common that image is not conveyed by having a cell phone or not, but rather what kind it is and what brand," said Rubio.

On another front, those who give a cell phone as a gift hold – or attempt to hold – a position of power over the recipient. Those providing mobile phones as a means to keep track of others include bosses, nervous parents and even jealous boyfriends or girlfriends.

Perhaps as a result, while before the ostentation of a cell phone was a status symbol, now not having one may be a luxury.

"I turn mine off on Friday night and don’t turn it on again until Monday morning," says Rodríguez in Montevideo.

"I got rid of the cell phone because I was fed up with all the calls," says Galo Puente, owner of a photography business in Mexico. "I felt I was being controlled by my family, the employees. But this little apparatus has become essential, and I had to reactivate it. It’s a form of slavery we have had to accept."

New means of communication have led to unforeseen changes in social conduct. And for some parents, the mobile phone has turned into a virtual umbilical cord.

In Chile, where the market is a battleground between Spain’s Endesa and Telefónica and BellSouth and Telecom Italia Mobile, a scout leader commented to IPS that at camp-outs he has to confiscate the cell phones that parents have packed with their children’s things.

A Rio de Janeiro father told IPS that the mobile phone has helped him to guide his daughter through "urban difficulties". He justifies her carrying the phone saying, "Many times she has gotten lost and we have had to give her directions so she can reach her destination. The phone and her guardian angel have saved her from dangerous situations."

In the wealthier peripheral neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, condominium residents overcome by fear tend to call the guards on their cell phones as they arrive home to open the gates. That way they do not have to stop and wait, and are at less risk of robbery or kidnapping.

But criminals also take advantage of cellular technology.

A pre-paid mobile phone, ideal for clandestine activities, is indispensable for the drug trade in Brazil, so much so that the police have established an obligatory registry of users.

In Argentina, as well as other countries, kidnappers often use their victims’ cell phones to demand ransom from their families.

But sometimes the mobile phone turns against the delinquents. Jessica Guzmán, 20, was shut inside a car boot by her kidnappers in the central Argentine province of Córdoba. After 13 hours of captivity she was free – safe and sound – and no ransom was paid.

She had hidden a cell phone in her clothing and used it to call the police.

(* With reporting by Marcela Valente/Argentina, Mario Osava/Brazil, Diego Cevallos/Mexico and Gustavo González/Chile.)