Seven million cellphone lines functioning today in Panama are the result of an expansion of mobile services and the competition of four companies for the control of the national market.
Official statistics say that only in 2014, 600 thousand new mobiles lines were acquired, equaling two per person, especially prepaid mobile services.
Companies offering the services like Movistar, Claro, +Movil and Digicel turned over 3.7 billion dollars between 2008 and 2014, the third part of that number being achieved only last year.
Land lines represent a number 10 times lower to mobile lines and are mostly used by offices, companies and businesses, with a modest annual growth
I find it funnily ironic that our cleaning girl has an I Phone and we don’t. Must mean we’re getting old, Ja!
To me it is worth noting that the service in general is so bad that everyone needs 2 phones to make a phone call, since on average if you have 2 at least one may be working at any given time.
Yes – what a difference now that the gov’t has relinquished control of the cellular business. Ironically, based on my telecom experience, Panama was one of the last countries in the world to provide cellular service. Working here in the early 2000’s with the gov’t controlling the cellular providers was a
the barrier at the time, was even while I was working for a major corporation. Trying to offer PTP ( aka Nextel type of service), was unsuccessful and the gov’t rules were fully understood but without getting into the technical details, was clearly a good service that didn’t make it.
Now, we have choices and some are the same as they were although the “names” have changed, it’s still two of the original providers that the gov’t granted the rights to provide service.
That being said, I am pleased with how rapidly there has been a change in the service offerings and on the focus of Internet for all. While this may have caused service degration from the original providers, the competitive landscape has or will be a benefit to everyone in the country that I have chosen to live and love,