3G Americas: Mobile connections in Latin America exceed half a billion; GSM networks rule around the world

Mobile connections in Latin America surpassed half a billion in Q4 2009, according to 3G Americas. Unsurprisingly, the GSM-HSPA technology is leading the way with 91% market share and 464 million connections reported at year-end 2009. Of that number, 64 million were added during 2009 (28 million in Brazil alone), of which 9.4 million were 3G connections.

As for North America, GSM-HSPA operators added 13.6 million new connections last year, 8 million in the last quarter alone.

In total, at the end of 2009, GSM-HSPA networks accounted for 73% of all mobile subscriptions, up from 70% a year before.

In the Western Hemisphere, UMTS-HSPA (3G) connections were up 136%, totaling more than 64 million at the end of 2009.

Finally, on the global scale, GSM-HSPA technologies reached 4.17 billion subscriptions across 345 commercial networks in 139 countries worldwide. In other words, that’s 89% of the market. And of that number [4.17 billion], more than 450 million people connect on UMTS-HSPA based 3G networks.

[Via: CellularNews]