Bolivia still has ground to cover in terms of infrastructure – 5G Americas

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By 5G Americas

This is a machine translation of the original press release issued in Spanish.

BUENOS AIRES, January 14, 2025.- By mid-2024, mobile lines in Bolivia reached 12.03 million, according to data provided by the Telecommunications and Transport Regulation and Oversight Authority (ATT) of Bolivia. The figures from the regulator, which presented this information in a webinar organized by 5G Americas last September, would indicate a penetration of approximately 108.8 percent, if we take into account the most recent preliminary data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which estimates the country's population at 11.3 million inhabitants by 2024.

According to ATT figures, 11.13 million lines also have mobile Internet, that is, 92.5 percent of the total number of mobile lines. Looking at the growth of mobile lines and lines with mobile Internet, a stabilization in the growth of both services can be seen over the last four years.

Despite this, there still seems to be room for technological advancement and the reduction of some gaps.

First, ATT's numbers show a noticeable difference in mobile line penetration by department, especially considering whether the area is rural or urban. While the departments with the largest urban populations, such as La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Tarija, exhibit penetration levels above 100 percent—with Oruro even reaching 132 percent—service density is at 70 percent or below in rural departments such as Pando, Potosí and Beni.

Coverage

ATT coverage data reveals that there are 20,163 base stations in the country, of which 56 percent are in urban areas and the remaining 44 percent in rural areas. But the biggest disparity is seen when considering the technologies: while 2G GSM and 3G UMTS base stations show similar numbers in urban and rural areas, there is a wide gap when examining 4G LTE cells.

While 4,946 4G LTE base stations can be found in urban areas (approximately 64 percent of the national total with this technology), in rural areas there are only 2,780 base stations, or the equivalent of 36 percent of the total.

This disparity in coverage in 4G is not comparable to previous technologies, 2G and 3G, in which the total number of radio bases is distributed almost equally between urban and rural areas.

“Without connectivity, we cannot talk about digital transformation, and to talk about digital transformation and connectivity we have to talk about infrastructure deployment. Not only with a view to developing one of the most important services provided to a country or a citizen, but also because of the integrating component that implies the inclusion of new technologies for development in different areas in a transversal way for an entire economy, for an entire society,” said during his presentation Néstor Ríos, executive director of the Telecommunications and Transport Regulation and Oversight Authority of Bolivia, ATT, and also current president of the Latin American Forum of Telecommunications Regulatory Entities (Regulatel).

The infographic can be downloaded here.

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