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Latin America broadband growth ~6% in 2017: TeleG

Pete Bell's TeleGeography data (below) show 10% growth at Argentina, Guatemala, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and El Salvador. Puerto Rico and Venezuela actually lost subscribers. Brazil added 2,083,000 to 28,670,000 (7.8% growth.) Telefónica Vivo is rushing to 10M homes with FTTH in order to win market share.

Uruguay has 79% household penetration. Government-owned Antel has covered 82% of the country with fiber home. Chile and Mexico are far behind at 61% and 59%. Brazil is at 43%. I don't have data, but I'd bet San Paulo and the Southern part of Brazil are closer to 60% and the North much lower. Brazil has extreme income and racial inequality with a Gini coefficient of 50. (The U.S. is the most unequal of developed countries, at 40; France is 32.)

AT&T fiber run rate going from 3M to 5M/year

John Donovan told investors they are now marketing fiber to 9M locations and he

expects that this time next year to reach 14M locations. ... We're doing very well in our fiber markets, including a 246,000 net increase in subs on our fiber network in the second quarter.

Customers are buying.

Broadband penetration in the fiber footprint continues to be significantly higher than in AT&T’s non-fiber footprint and is nearly 50% in locations marketed to for more than 30 months

5M fiber homes passed in one year would be the fastest ever achieved in the West, although China now has 328M homes directly connected to fiber.

China: 1.1B 4G, >400M BB, 328M fiber home, rapid growth

Chinese Dragon Walters Museum 230 In June, China Mobile added 4.6M landlines, reaching 135M. China Telecom added 1.3M to come to 140M + 24M in the areas covered by parent company CTC. China Unicom added .3M to 70M. Add independent Dr. Peng and the relatively modest cable totals and the country total is well over 400M, about 40% of the world's 1,000,000,000 connections.

Mobile connections topped 1.4B. Most are 4G but several hundred million have not yet upgraded. China Telecom was the June leader at 5.5M added, China Unicom's newly found aggressiveness has created a price war, but revenues continue to grow.

Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung ban could cripple U.S. 5G (Satire)

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 079 Donald Trump tweeted, "All three are massively involved in upgrading networks in Syria, Iran & Cuba, our enemies. We must ban them from the U.S." Trump discovered that Ericsson is working with ETECSA on Campo Proyecto in Cuba. Ericsson & Nokia both have large, active teams in Syria and Iran. Samsung supplies almost half the cell phones in Iran. Most Nokia wireless gear is made in China in a joint venture 50% owned by the Chinese government

With this move, all five companies with 5G networks cannot sell in the U.S.

"Ericsson bragged about a $B sale to China Mobile just a few days after we banned them from the U.S. Just like Germany's gas deal with Russia, this means they are under control. 5G bragging rights are important, but not as important as U.S. power around the world."

Adtran expects G.fast boost from AT&T & Australia but Century still isn't buidling

Tom Stanton expects G.fast sales to nbn Australia and AT&T for incumbent area use. At least one and possibly two large cablecos are buying 10 gig PON gear and he expects NG-PON2 revenue before the end of the year. But Century still isn't spending and Deutsche Telekom is cutting back.

Things are so tight they've cut back on R & D, dangerous while their largest international competitor, Huawei, is increasing R&D rapidly. The quarterly loss was less than in Q1 but over $10M before an income tax refund. Adtran is a respected company struggling in a tough market. Adtran and Calix made an early move to SDN/NFV that is starting to pay off.

The income statement is below.

300,000,000 connections at stake in rural India

BharatNet meeting 230 625,000 villages are being connected with fiber by the remarkable Bharatnet, on track to complete in 2019. One to five Wi-Fi hotspots in each area (GP) will offer services including banking and e-gov for eight cents (U.S.) per day to $1.50/month. These "Common services centres" will often be run by "Village level entrepreneurs," perhaps as many as 100,000.

DOT's goal is 500,000 deployed in 2018 under a light licensing procedure. 43,000 are already in place and 300,000 more on the way. Some will be solar-powered.

This is the largest Internet access program on earth, originally conceived by Sam Pitroda in the government of Dr. Mammohan Singh. It is a credit to the government building it.* Telcos are also connecting; Bharti has 30,000 cells planned. Reliance Jio, now with 4G to 96% of Indians, will raise that to 99%. Jio has better coverage than most of the major Europeans, all state of the art 4G LTE.

The big four telcos now are demanding a delay and a huge increase in costs. "Establishing public WiFi networks without licence will be illegal being in violation of the Indian Telegraph Act 1885."

5G Why Verizon thinks differently and what to do about it

why verizon 230 Only one telco on Earth has publicly committed to a large, millimeter wave 5G build designed for true gigabit service: Verizon. The Europeans are all using 5G Low, 70%-90% slower.

STL Partners, a British consulting outfit I respect, commissioned me to ask why. That report is now out. If you're a client, download it here. If not, and corporate priced research is interesting to you, ask me to introduce you to one of the principals.

It was fascinating work because the answers aren't obvious. Lowell McAdam's company is spending $20B to cover 30M+ homes in the first stage. The progress in low & mid-band, both "4G" and "5G," has been remarkable. In most territories, millimeter wave will not be necessary to meet expected demand.

McAdam sees a little further. mmWave has 3-4X the capacity of low and mid-band. He sees an enormous marketing advantage: unlimited services, even less congestion, reputation as the best network. Verizon testing found mmWave rate/reach was twice what had been estimated. All prior cost estimates need revision.

My take: even if mmWave doesn't fit in your current budget, telcos should expand trials and training to be ready as things change. The new cost estimates may be low enough to change your mind.

India unreal: Jio goes for 50M FTTH in 1100 cities, already 215M 4G and 96+% covered

Jio worlds largest data network230

Audited financials* report a profit with prices of $2-10/month. Rio sells with feature phones from $30 and smartphones from $60. Ambani offers LTE to 96% of India, confirmed independently by OpenSignal. heading to 99%. No government subsidy, ET predicts prices will start at $8.

If India can do this with a $7K per capita income, so can Poland $29K per capita, Malaysia $28K, Argentina $20K, Mexico $19K, Dominican Republic $17K, Egypt $13K, Indonesia $12K, and many, perhaps most, of the 110 countries with higher incomes than India. Myanmar, one of the world's poorest, is over 90% covered and will soon be 95% LTE. Less than that is a government failure.

The primary secret is the incredibly low costs of today's wireless networks. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam says his current cost per bit is 90% less than just a couple of years ago.

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