Claro Eyes Growth with GSM Network

Chilean mobile operator Claro, formerly Smartcom, plans to see growth in the coming months based on its recently launched GSM network which enables the company to offer new value-added services such as Blackberry, push to talk and push to view, Claro Chile CEO Salvador Salazar told BNamericas.

With an investment of approximately US$300mn, Claro's new GSM network will operate simultaneously alongside the company's CDMA network. Consequently, the nearly two million subscribers will not be migrated to the GSM platform unless they specifically request that option.

"Our growth will be based on the GSM network, the most modern network in Latin America, which runs with Edge technology, faster than GPRS," Salazar said.

Besides the possibility of launching new value added services, Salazar said the new network provides the opportunity to offer exclusive handsets with a 128Mb SIM card that can incorporate additional services.

The two million client base gives Claro, a unit of Mexican mobile group América Móvil, third place in the Chilean market, after Movistar Chile, owned by Spain's Telefónica, and Entel PCS.

Salazar said the plan is to lead the mobile market, although this is a long-term strategy without specific deadlines.

The company believes they can grow the subscriber base with first-time users and clients poached from other companies. "There is no doubt there are possibilities in a new market, but with our new solutions we also plan to give new options to current mobile users," he added.

Traditionally, Smartcom has marketed an image targeted toward the teenager segment and most of its client base is on prepaid plans.

"Now we aim to be a company that will appeal to teenagers and adults, small companies and large corporations and we have interesting plans in prepaid and postpaid to offer to all of them," Salazar said.

BNAmericas.com"

Posted to the site on 23rd August 2006