Ericsson announced its 3-year deal with Movistar Argentina to transform its Radio Access Network (RAN) to expand network coverage and improve mobile broadband experience to its customers.
Movistar Argentina engineers will start the modernization work this year. Ericsson said that Movistar Argentina will be completing a part of the network upgrade in 2021. The scope covers improvements to radio access network capacity and coverage as well as an OSS migration to Ericsson Network Manager.

The RAN transformation deal also enables Movistar Argentina, a Telefonica owned operator, to start its journey towards 5G and IoT through the 5G-evolution capabilities of Ericsson Radio System.

“We are strengthening our partnership with Ericsson by having end-customer experience and satisfaction as the most important common goals,” Federico Rava, executive president of Movistar Argentina, said.

Arun Bansal, head of Market Area Europe and Latin America, Ericsson, said: “The deal means we will almost double our market share with Telefonica, which is a great vote of confidence and trust in our ability to help them transform as they move towards 5G.”

Statista says Claro, owned by America Movil, held 37 percent share of wireless subscribers in Argentina in Q4 2017. Movistar – a part of global telecom operator Telefonica — has over 32 percent share in the Argentina telecom market. Telecom Argentina has 31 percent of the share in Argentina.

Argentina has the second highest mobile phone user penetration rate in Latin America, only behind Chile, according to GSMA Intelligence.

Mobile operators in Argentina are expected to make a Capital investment (Capex) of $9 billion in 2016-2020.

GSMA, in a 2015 report, said Telefonica, Telecom Argentina and America Movil will be making an investment of $2.6 billion, $2.1 billion and $2.7 billion respectively by 2020 to primarily improve mobile Internet coverage.

Ericsson, in November 2017, said Movistar Argentina conducted the 5G trial in Buenos Aires using Ericsson’s mmWave 28GHz 5G Test Bed solution, reaching a record speed of 20Gbps.