CALA cellular market (LATAM and Caribbean markets): the landscape has totally changed over the past few years. From a TDMA fortress ten years ago, the market has successively adopted CDMA then GSM technologies. There are currently nearly 100 GSM operators in the region serving an estimated 73m customers. GSM share should currently be around 39% or 73m users, followed by TDMA with 35% or 66 m subscribers, then CDMA with 24% or 46m subscribers, then IDEN with just 1% or 1.9m users. In total the region should have 188m mobile users. Furthermore, dynamics is on the GSM side with three fold more user additions (11.5m in 1Q05) than in CDMA, while TDMA user number is now declining. How can be explained this GSM growth and market penetration? Of course, there is first a demand for mobile services, but the main driver should be the attraction for a worldwide standard, covering about 85% of countries and 70% of mobile usage. Furthermore, the recent initiative of launching low-cost GSM handsets in emerging countries can only reinforce its market penetration. Logically, a majority of mobile operators in the region adopted EDGE and UMTS as the normal path to high-speed wireless data services. 18 operators in the region now deploy EDGE.
