The post Latin America’s telecom evolution: unleashing DePIN’s potential appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

The following is a guest post from Sofia Bobrik, CEO and Co-founder at TechWaves PR. Latin America is a tough market for the region’s telcos and their customers. From indebted operators, falling revenues, and counterproductive incentives to unaffordable tariffs, low service quality, as well as a gap in connectivity and demand, the LATAM telecom industry must undergo a substantial transformation to become financially sustainable for participants. Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs) are capable of tackling these challenges and fostering the sector’s much-needed evolution with a distributed and resilient infrastructure facilitating scalable, reliable, and affordable telecom solutions across LATAM and beyond. A struggling telecom market Despite internet penetration rising from 46% in 2013 to 81% by 2023 in Latin America and the Caribbean, the region’s telecom industry faces unique problems that make it less sustainable and competitive than in Europe, North America, or Asia. First, a gap in coverage impacts 7% of the region’s population, which is mostly concentrated in remote locations with complex terrains—like Columbia’s mountainous regions—where it is not financially viable for mobile network operators to expand their services. But there’s also a usage gap affecting 28% of Latin Americans, who don’t access telcos’ solutions despite residing in areas with active mobile broadband coverage. In Argentina, the coverage gap affects 4% while the usage gap is 23%. On the other hand, just 66% of Brazil’s population has access to mobile broadband services, with 12% and 23% struggling with the connectivity and usage gaps, respectively. One of the main reasons for this usage gap is telecom services’ lack of affordability, caused primarily by infrastructural challenges, CapEx-heavy expansions, indebted regional operators, and regulatory challenges. In countries like Argentina, taxes significantly increase broadband costs, with up to 44.5% of the price attributed to taxes. While fixed internet prices have dropped in Buenos Aires…

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Filed under: News - @ February 23, 2025 6:09 am