Significantly, its momentum appears to have come at the expense of Verizon's Movilnet, which is one of Latin America's most advanced TDMA networks. With examples like these it is not surprising that operators are looking to switch allegiances or force some TDMA-GSM convergence. GSM's spread has much to do with the strategic interests of these companies. It has also had much to do with Ericsson, still Latin America's dominant wireless infrastructure vendor. This will focus the minds of Nokia, Alcatel and Siemens as Brazil's 1.8GHz licences are issued.
Handset developments are also a major factor.
Nokia will follow suit. Demand should be high enough to guarantee that they are cheap, even if they are initially quite chunky. How fast GSM now grows in Latin America is anybody's guess. EMC was predicting that the GSM subscriber base would rise from 1.6 million in September 2000 to nearly 18 million by 2004. However, with the new overlays and conversions, the figure will probably be much higher.