Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Thursday, November 21, 2019

Catel's MVO enlists engines for 2020: the road to Quadruple Play and the role of Carrier-Grade Wifi

Six cooperatives are part of the initial phase of the project, each with its own strategy and a concrete investment contribution to accompany the initiative undertaken by the Chamber of Telecommunications Cooperatives. To these six, another eight will be added that will participate through Colsecor, and an unspecified amount that will do so through Catel.

The last months of 2019 will be key in the assembly and tuning of the MVO of the Catel (Chamber of Telecommunications Cooperatives). The project, originally announced at the end of 2017, raffled off two years of economic crisis and uncertainty, and would culminate with the start of commercial operations in March 2020, as Aver Fernández, president of the entity, told Convergencialatina.

Six cooperatives are part of the initial phase of the project (Monte, Telpin, Tortuguitas, Telviso, San Genaro and Villa Gobernador Galvez), each with its own strategy and a concrete investment contribution to accompany the initiative faced by Catel. To these six, another eight will be added that will participate through Colsecor, and an unspecified amount that will do so through Catel. The success of the MVO - to be able to compete against big ones - will be to negotiate in better terms with the MNO (Movistar) and generate scale. That is why we think of a single brand that unifies the MVO of Catel, regardless of whether each cooperative of the initial six can add its local flavor. And did not rule out that organizations such as Cabase and Cacpy become part in the near future. The initial projection is to reach 30% of the total users of the cooperatives in the initial phase within two years.

Since the beginning of October, the technical, billing, customer service, claims teams, among other areas, of participating cooperatives meet once a week to align processes and define what the mass market will be like. Local qualities will be incorporated into each offer, guaranteeing attention as close as it is currently provided for fixed services. As Fernández explained, the experience achieved must be different from that given by large operators.

Catel aims to put the platform into operation before the end of 2019, and in parallel the brand with which they will operate could be announced. Then they will continue three months of testing, to test everything necessary with employees and affinity groups.

The expectation of the cooperatives that will debut next March with mobile services varies according to the competitive situation each one faces in their locality. As a sign of this disparity, the service that Villa Gobernador Galvez will provide will be given in an area of ??complicated competition, on the outskirts of Rosario, where the big three operate and there is 4G infrastructure; On its part, the Cordoba cooperative of Hernando waits for Movistar to deploy 4G cells in the town to launch itself as an MVO.

From Telviso they recognize that at the beginning the MVO model can be deficient, but they trust that it will help to leverage the rest of the services, as happened with IPTV. This security is not perceived in the case of Telpin, which was the last cooperative to be confirmed for the initial phase, because it feared losing its central focus: the deployment of optical fiber.

Carrier-Grade Wifi

Beyond the rental of the mobile network to Movistar, a central pillar of the Catel MVO project is the Carrier-Grade Wifi, which already works in some cases of cooperatives, prior to this incursion into mobile services. It consists of Wifi nodes installed in fixed networks to provide connectivity to new mobile clients while they remain within the areas of these networks, about 2.4 Ghz and 5.8 Ghz. When leaving these areas, users will continue to be connected to the MVO platform that uses Movistar’s cellular access networks. It will be sought that the client does not differentiate to which network he/she is connected.

In the case of Colsecor, as Miguel Factor, VP of Engineering explained to Convergencialatina, 75% of the locations in which its associates operate does not have 4G services, so the Carrier-Grade Wifi plays an even more relevant role.

With this model, the cooperatives grant mobility to the client that today uses its fixed network: that mobility will be given either by the cellular network or by Carrier-Grade Wifi's own network. Telviso is one of the most advanced project participants in the implementation: it has 55 access points installed in the center of Del Viso, shopping centers and certain private neighborhoods. In any case, as Nicolás Vidal, sub Technology Manager of the cooperative, confided, to achieve a good deployment it is necessary to double this number, at least, adding public areas not as dense as the first. The initial purchase projection - at a rate of US$ 1.000 for each access point - was achieved by 50% due to the economic situation.

In the case of Telpin, in a first stage it will deploy 40 access points. Darío Oliver, General Manager of the Pinamar cooperative, anticipated that about 25 will be installed next summer (in shopping centers, beaches, banks), to improve the quality of service - considering the seasonal particularity of the beach town - and to do an extension of benefits to its fixed broadband customers.

Colsecor's vision

The MVO project has two main objectives for Colsecor: to provide its associates with Triple Play of a fourth product; and extend connectivity to unconnected sites in the country, a project that is made possible through the Colsecor Foundation.

In the first case, the eight cooperatives that will join the initiative - those of Hernando, Justiniano Posse, Belén de Catamarca and Bariloche are known so far - do so through Colsecor to take advantage of the integration when it comes to training personnel, acquire equipment, handle billing, recharges, claims, among other operational processes, as explained by Miguel Factor, VP of Engineering of the entity.

As for the second objective, they will start with a project for sites not connected in departments of western Catamarca, in the area of Puna and Prepuna: there are seven villages - there are five confirmed so far (El Salado, Punta de Balasto, Cóndor Huasi, Villa Vil, Pozo de Piedra) -, which do not exceed 200 to 300 inhabitants, without even fixed telephony.

The deployment of Carrier-Grade Wifi is especially important for this implementation: Catel will provide the numbering; the Colsecor Foundation, connectivity; and the government of Catamarca, part of the equipment.

 

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