COMMUNICATIONS-LATIN AMERICA: Mobile Phones Only a Partial Solution

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 7 2005 (IPS) - The statistics seem to reflect encouraging progress: the number of telephones per 100 inhabitants rose from 23.12 to 52.7 in South America between 1999 and 2004, while Central America experienced a leap from 17.24 to 47.9, more than tripling the population’s access to telephone service.

But the statistics are deceptive when it comes to progress in information and communications technologies. The lion’s share of this increase corresponds to mobile phones, which have enjoyed a boom across Latin America in recent years, but do not solve the problem of access to the Internet and other innovations.

Of the 193 million telephone subscribers in South America in 2004, 62.6 percent were mobile phone users. While the number of fixed-line telephone connections grew by eight percent annually over the last five years, cellphone use expanded by 32.6 percent. The figures for Central America are similar: 10.3 percent and 38.8 percent, respectively.

In the meantime, 80.9 percent of mobile phones in South America and 89.8 percent in Central America are used with prepaid cards, which demonstrates how this option has made it possible for even those with limited economic resources to have access to telecommunications services.

Millions use their cellphones almost exclusively to receive calls. This is the case of teenagers whose parents provide them with mobile phones in order to keep track of them, as well as street vendors and informal sector workers for whom cellular phones serve the function of a mobile office.

“I almost never make calls, but having a cell phone has made my life easier. I get more work because people can contact me at any time,” Madalena da Costa, a domestic worker with a number of different employers, told IPS.

It is also an economical way of communicating, as she spends just 20 reals (under nine dollars) on a single prepaid card every month.

Practically all of the mobile phones in some of the region’s countries are used on a prepaid basis. This was the case for 99 percent of cellphones in Suriname last year, 93.5 percent in Mexico, 93.3 percent in Venezuela and 80.5 percent in Brazil, as compared with six percent in the United States.

These figures were released by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) at Telecom Americas 2005, an international forum held in Salvador da Bahía, Brazil this Monday through Thursday.

The event, which included an exhibit of telecommunications equipment and technology, attracted a total of 2,100 participants and visitors.

The relative lack of progress in fixed-line telecommunications is an obstacle to digital inclusion, since this is still the principal means of connection to the Internet, observed ITU deputy secretary general Roberto Blois.

In Brazil, for example, the number of fixed-line telephones in use has ceased to grow further since 2002, and has held steady at roughly 39 million.

While the number of Internet users has rapidly expanded, it had still reached only 12 per 100 inhabitants throughout Latin America and the Caribbean last year, which is five times less than in the United States and Canada.

“Digital exclusion is only a symptom, the illness is economic exclusion,” said Reza Jafari, chair of the Telecom Americas 2005 Advisory Committee, referring to the fact that poverty and inequality are the root causes for the limited access to new information and communications technologies (ICTs) in Latin America.

The “high cost” was the reason for not owning a computer given by 59 percent of Mexicans surveyed, while 21 percent said they did not consider it necessary. In Latin America, unlike the United States and Canada, Internet users far outnumber computer owners, since those who cannot afford one of their own use computers at work, school, friend’s homes or cyber cafes.

Consequently, many of the technological innovations featured at Telecom Americas 2005, like “triple play”, through which voice telephony, video entertainment (like broadcast television) and data services (mainly the Internet) are delivered over the same network and/or by the same service provider, are far beyond the reach of the majority of Latin Americans.

The new wireless technologies are also clearly not an option for prepaid mobile phone customers.

And broadband connectivity, while relatively commonplace in most developed nations, is a privilege enjoyed by less than one percent of the population in most Latin American countries and slightly over one percent in Argentina and Brazil. Chile is an exception, with a figure of 5.9 percent.

As a result, only a wealthy few have access to cost-cutting innovations like free Internet-based long distance calling, not to mention the inequity that stems from unequal access to information and knowledge.

But as Carlos Afonso of Brazil’s Information Network for the Third Sector (RITS) commented to IPS, issues like overcoming the digital gap are of little interest to participants in events like Telecom Americas 2005, an event primarily geared to the business sector.

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