Telephone
The Argentine telephone system is more modern following privatization in the 1990s and, more recently, market deregulation. The network was initially developed primarily by ITT, and grew following the system's nationalization in 1948 and the creation of the ENTel State enterprise. Its limitations notwithstanding, ENTel gave Argentines the widest access to phone service in Latin America. Following ENTel's privatization in 1990, a new numbering plan was enacted, and the number of lines grew to cover the majority of households. A sizable minority of households, do not have land line telephone service, however. The growth of the mobile telephone market since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2003 has been impressive, with new customers now preferring a comparatively cheap cellular phone to land line household service.
As of January 2010, there are 9.2 million land lines, 50 million cellular phones and 143,000 public phones in the country. The domestic telephone trunk network is served by microwave radio relay and a domestic satellite system with 40 earth stations. It carries a monthly traffic of about 1.3 billion local calls, 400 million inter-city calls and around 24 million outgoing international calls.
International communications employ satellite earth stations - 3 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean); two international gateways near Buenos Aires; Atlantis II submarine cable (1999). This system is largely replaced with a domestic fiber optic ring connecting the main cities (actually the main central offices). This link runs at 2.5 Gbit/s. From these head central offices, local calls are routed through 10 Gbit/s fiber optic links, or 3 × 155 Mbit/s microwave links. These links are spaced at about 30 km. Some of these links (the ones serving smaller towns) are spaced at 60 km and this makes communications unreliable in certain weather conditions.
According to a report released in January 2006 by INDEC, mobile phone lines increased by 68.8% during 2005. Eleven million mobile phones were sold that year and, by then, these serviced three-quarters of the population over 14. A growing minority of users are children under 14, something that has raised concern and debate in Argentine society. A private study conducted by Investigaciones Económicas Sectoriales (IES), covering January–October 2006, found a 51.2% growth compared to the same period of 2005; by December 2007, the number of these units (40 million) exceeded Argentina's total population. Most of the phones (almost 90%) are imported from Brazil or Mexico. The monthly volume of calls made with these units (over 4.6 billion) more than doubles the number made on land lines; a further 6 billion text messages are sent, monthly.
Read more about this topic: Telecommunications In Argentina
Famous quotes containing the word telephone:
“Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“It’s a hard feeling when everyone’s in a hurry to talk to somebody else, but not to talk to you. Sometimes you get a feeling of need to talk to somebody. Somebody who wants to listen to you other than “Why didn’t you get me the right number?””
—Heather Lamb, U.S. telephone operator. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart and democracy itself cannot function without the essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the Lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night.”
—Howard Brenton (b. 1942)