09/11/2010  Suriname - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband

Suriname is a small country with only 507,000 residents, the only Dutch-speaking countries in South America, with affinities close to the Caribbean area. State-owned Telecommunicatiebedrijf Suriname (Telesur) has a monopoly on all fixed line and broadband services in Suriname, but the mobile industry is a active sector in competition with three companies competing for market share. Suriname teledensity is a little below average for Latin America and the Caribbean, a consequence which is in line with the country's GDP per capita, also a little below the regional average. The fixed line infrastructure is reasonable in the most populated coastal region, but poor in the interior. Nevertheless, efforts were made to contact the inland communities Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) or CDMA fixed wireless 450 systems. mobile phone diffusion of Suriname is amazingly high. He passed the milestone of 100% in December 2008 and continues to raise, with many subscribers with up to 3 mobile lines with different operators. Until December 2007, when competition from mobile operators Digicel and Uniqa launched GSM networks, Telesur has been the exclusive provider of all telecommunications except dial-up Internet, where he was a competitor. Internet diffusion and broadband, nevertheless, far in the rear, and are much less developed than one might anticipate on the basis of socio-economic indicators in the country. Broadband is excessive and slow. Highlights: There were strategy to liberate the telecommunications sector to competition from Suriname, but only the liberalization of the mobile has been implemented. With the opening of the mobile market, the number of subscribers rose and diffusion has more than doubled in two years. A new Suriname and Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS), due for completion in mid-2010, should significantly increase the bandwidth capacity in Suriname. Consequently, broadband should be faster, but prices are likely to remain relatively high until there is some competition in the broadband sector. Telesur is no agreement yet on SMS interconnection with the other two operators. 

Uniqa and Digicel customers, on the other hand, were able to send SMS messages smoothly across networks since the beginning of 2009 .