A government plan to increase broadband access and the adoption of smartphones will fuel data growth in Colombia over the next several years, Pyramid Research predicts in a report.
The Colombian government wants to place particular emphasis on the availability of infrastructure for broadband coverage and desires to quadruple the number of Internet connections in the country to 8.8 million, according to the Cambridge, Mass.-based research firm.
Pyramid Research forecasts that the Colombian telecommunications market will be worth $7.7 billion this year, up 7% from $7.3 billion in 2010 revenues. The research firm attributes anticipated growth to a recovery in the economy and an increase in data services.
Areas of fast growth will include mobile data, fixed VoIP and broadband Internet, Pyramid Research said in a report released this month.
“More spectrum availability, intense handset vendor competition and decreasing smartphone prices have fueled mobile content consumption and wireless broadband connectivity in Columbia," Pyramid Research analyst Juliana Gomez said in a press release.
The research firm still expects mobile voice to remain the main source of revenues, with mobile data representing the second-largest source of revenues in 2016.
“On the other hand, we expect dial-up Internet service revenue to decline and become very small compared with the scale of the data market," Pyramid Research said in the report.
