Friday, February 26, 2021

Interview one month after the launch of the new operator

Chris Bannister: "The Colombian market is not ready for 5G "

The CEO of the Novator Partners subsidiary has been in the business of establishing mobile businesses for 25 years. Colombia is the 11th market where it lands, after the successful case of WOM in Chile. The firm has already hired 1,535 employees and anticipates investments of US$ 1 billion in the next five years. "In 12 to 18 months, Colombia will have a competitive market due to the entry of WOM," he said.

Colombia is the 11th market in which Chris Bannister has landed to establish a mobile operator. With the help of Novator Partners, owner of WOM in Chile and Colombia, he started in 2005 with the establishment of the Play operator in Poland, and in 2015 he landed in Chile with a similar objective. But earlier, 25 years ago, he had debuted in the creation and initial organization of mobile operators in Vietnam and Singapore, in other companies, and later he was part of the first 3G operation in Sweden. In a talk with Convergencialatina, he recalls that Scandinavian experience and compares 3G with 5G, in terms of its potential to change society: “3G gave us social media, new industries, it was a revolution for the consumer. 4G improved that, but it did not mean a change in lifestyle, but better and faster access to the digitization process. 5G will involve more industrial changes than for the consumer, it will be an industrial revolution.”

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