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REPORTS: LATIN AMERICA |
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Wednesday 10
December
2003
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LATIN AMERICA:
Cell Phones - From Status Symbol to Tool
of the Masses
Marcelo Jelen*
MONTEVIDEO, (IPS) - In the early
1990s, Uruguayan businessman Luis
Rodríguez asked his secretary to call
him during a meeting with some of his
clients. He had a cellular telephone and
he wanted to show it off.
Owning a mobile phone -- as big and
heavy as a brick in those days -- was a
status symbol, but also a magnet for
thieves, according to Rodríguez, who for
the past 25 years has been in the
business of selling telephones and
accessories.
This scenario changed quickly in Latin
America, at the same time as private
capital erupted in the
telecommunications market. Millions of
people of modest income gained access in
recent years to their first telephone --
and for many it was a cellular phone.
In 1990 there were just 100,000 mobile
phone lines in the region, according to
the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU). That figure skyrocketed to
38 million by 1999.
Today, according to private sector
experts consulted by IPS, there are 120
million cell phones ringing, vibrating
and playing snatches of songs and
filling pockets throughout Latin
America.
The telecoms experts calculate that
mobile phone lines already surpass the
number of fixed, or ”land” lines in the
region. According to the ITU, this
situation has been confirmed in Bolivia,
Chile, Dominican Republic, Guatemala,
Haiti, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and
Venezuela.
The pattern is the same in most European
countries (Britain, France, Germany,
Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland and those of the former
Yugoslavia), but not in Canada and the
United States, where fixed lines still
outnumber cellular phone lines.
At one extreme in Latin America is Cuba,
where the state owns and operates all
telecoms services; there are 5.1 fixed
lines for every 100 inhabitants and 0.07
mobile phones.
At the other is Paraguay, with a market
distributed between the Luxembourg-based
Millicom International Cellular
consortium and the partnership of
Telecom France and Telecom Italia
Mobile. There are four times more mobile
phone lines (20.4 per 100 inhabitants)
than fixed lines (5.12 per 100).
The Finnish cell phone manufacturer
Nokia estimates there will be 170
million mobile lines in Latin America in
2008.
Brazil had just five million mobile
lines when its telecoms were privatised
in 1998. From January to August that
year another 5.2 million were added to
that market. This year, cellular phone
lines surpassed 40 million, a full one
million more than fixed lines.
According to a 2000 ITU report, the
combination of private ownership and
growing competition put the Latin
American mobile phone market among the
most rapidly expanding in the world.
The economic crisis that began in the
late 1990s and intensified in the past
few years prompted several corporations
in the mobile telephony sector, such as
the U.S.-based AT&T, Verizon and SBC, to
sell off shares in order to reduce their
operations in the region.
Those who remained, like Spain's
Telefónica, the U.S. BellSouth and
Mexico's América Móvil, are sending
signals that they have seen a light at
the end of the tunnel: they are
announcing new investments in the
sector.
The costs of cellular telephone services
were put within reach of average
citizens as a result of pre-paid phone
cards, which became the only way that
many Latin Americans could afford a
telephone at all.
With the card, the user is purchasing a
set number of minutes for making phone
calls, but there are no limits for
receiving calls. All that is required is
a minimum monthly or bimonthly purchase
of minutes, and this is even within the
means of many of the poorest.
In this way, the domestic employees of
many middle class families had acquired
cellular phones before their employers
did, who had continued to rely on
fixed-line telephones.
In addition to the cheaper services
emerged an informal market of used and
stolen cell phones, available in many
Latin American capitals at street
markets.
Rodríguez, the Uruguayan retailer, sells
new mobile phones for around 110 dollars
and used ones for 60 dollars. But at a
street market in Montevideo, IPS was
offered a cell phone for nine dollars,
with a rechargeable battery, but no
guarantees, of course.
In the Americas, says the ITU, the
mobile phone is increasingly a
substitute for the fixed-line telephone,
more than a complement, as it is in
other regions.
For residents of some countries, like
Brazil and Uruguay, opting for mobile
telephone services instead of fixed
lines has become a way to overcome the
historic gap between supply and demand
for phones, especially in rural areas.
The slogan of telephone companies seems
to be ”no more wires”, says Carlos
Afonso, a Brazilian engineer, political
scientist and expert in information
technologies. The phone corporations
”are trying to avoid using wires in the
streets,” he told IPS.
In 4.2 million Brazilian homes (8.8
percent of the total) the only phone is
a cellular, with services covered by
consortiums led by the companies
Telefónica of Spain, Portugal Telecom
and Telecom Italia Mobile.
But the cell phone has not meant
significant changes in access to
communications in the least developed
countries of the region. In Haiti, the
poorest nation of the Americas, there
are just 0.97 fixed-line telephones and
1.11 mobile phones for every 100 people.
A cell phone today says very little
about the socio-economic status of the
person carrying it. For a broad swath of
the Latin American population, it has
become an item of primary necessity.
”Electricians, plumbers, painters and
informal workers have made the cellular
their mobile office, and can be reached
at any moment, wherever they are, to
come and do a job,” says Brazilian
expert Afonso.
Mexican social psychologist Eusebio
Rubio told IPS that in his country,
”even the street sweepers and vendors
carry mobile phones, because for many of
them it is a tool for work. But in some
places, it is still considered a
luxury.”
”It was a symbol of social ascent until
the late 1990s, but since then the
mobile phone has become so widespread
that it has lost that status. Today it
is so common that image is not conveyed
by having a cell phone or not, but
rather what kind it is and what brand,”
said Rubio.
On another front, those who give a cell
phone as a gift hold -- or attempt to
hold -- a position of power over the
recipient. Those providing mobile phones
as a means to keep track of others
include bosses, nervous parents and even
jealous boyfriends or girlfriends.
Perhaps as a result, while before the
ostentation of a cell phone was a status
symbol, now not having one may be a
luxury.
”I turn mine off on Friday night and
don't turn it on again until Monday
morning,” says Rodríguez in Montevideo.
”I got rid of the cell phone because I
was fed up with all the calls,” says
Galo Puente, owner of a photography
business in Mexico. ”I felt I was being
controlled by my family, the employees.
But this little apparatus has become
essential, and I had to reactivate it.
It's a form of slavery we have had to
accept.”
New means of communication have led to
unforeseen changes in social conduct.
And for some parents, the mobile phone
has turned into a virtual umbilical
cord.
In Chile, where the market is a
battleground between Spain's Endesa and
Telefónica and BellSouth and Telecom
Italia Mobile, a scout leader commented
to IPS that at camp-outs he has to
confiscate the cell phones that parents
have packed with their children's
things.
A Rio de Janeiro father told IPS that
the mobile phone has helped him to guide
his daughter through ”urban
difficulties”. He justifies her carrying
the phone saying, ”Many times she has
gotten lost and we have had to give her
directions so she can reach her
destination. The phone and her guardian
angel have saved her from dangerous
situations.”
In the wealthier peripheral
neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires,
condominium residents overcome by fear
tend to call the guards on their cell
phones as they arrive home to open the
gates. That way they do not have to stop
and wait, and are at less risk of
robbery or kidnapping.
But criminals also take advantage of
cellular technology.
A pre-paid mobile phone, ideal for
clandestine activities, is indispensable
for the drug trade in Brazil, so much so
that the police have established an
obligatory registry of users.
In Argentina, as well as other
countries, kidnappers often use their
victims' cell phones to demand ransom
from their families.
But sometimes the mobile phone turns
against the delinquents. Jessica Guzmán,
20, was shut inside a car boot by her
kidnappers in the central Argentine
province of Córdoba. After 13 hours of
captivity she was free -- safe and sound
-- and no ransom was paid.
She had hidden a cell phone in her
clothing and used it to call the police.
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