Summary
Besides being the second poorest country in Central America, Honduras has an extremely unequal distribution of income-about 70% of the population live below the poverty line.
Teledensity is about 14% lower than average for Central America. Nevertheless, it is better than one would expect based on the country's other economic indicators. Mobile penetration is about average for Central America and quite high compared with GDP per capita.
Fixed-line telephony has been partly liberalised, with long-distance telephony open to competition, but local services are still a monopoly of state-owned Hondutel and its franchise partners. Laws governing full liberalisation have been delayed amid allegations of corruption and political wrangling over the role of Hondutel.
The mobile sector, on the other hand, is highly competitive, with four operators offering services. The market leader is Millicom's Tigo, followed by America Movil's Claro. Digicel entered the market in late 2008. Three companies have received WiMAX licences.
The Internet has been slow to develop in Honduras. ADSL is still primarily used by corporate customers. Nevertheless, the demand for broadband is increasing and there are some small developments regarding network upgrades to Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH).
Market highlights:
VoIP telephony services are more readily available than normal phone service and significantly cheaper.
There are good investment opportunities for wireless DSL and WiMAX, since the fixed-line and cable networks have insufficient capacity.
Cable Sula, the second largest cableco in terms of subscribers, announced it would upgrade its networks to FttH technology.
Millicom International, the leading mobile provider in Honduras through Tigo, has acquired cable TV and triple player Amnet.
Honduras is the first and only country in Central America to have chosen a Digital Terrestrial TV standard: the government has opted for the US ATSC.
Both Claro and Tigo have launched 3G mobile services based on WCDMA technology.
A number of factors are currently influencing telecoms growth, particularly the economic downturn and political unrest in the region.Lucia Bibolini
June 2010
Table of Contents
1. Executive summary
2. Key statistics
2.1 Country overview
3. Telecommunications market
3.1 Overview of Honduran telecom market
4. Regulatory environment
4.1 Regulatory authority
4.1.1 Comision Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (Conatel)
4.2 Privatisation
4.3 DR-CAFTA
4.4 Foreign investment
4.5 Telecom sector liberalisation in Honduras
4.6 'Telephony For All' program
4.7 Number portability (NP)
5. Telecom network operators in Honduras
5.1 Hondutel
5.2 Multifon
5.3 Tele+ (Comunitel)
6. Telecommunications infrastructure
6.1 National telecom networks
6.1.1 Public telephones
6.2 International infrastructure
6.2.1 Interconnection with other Central American countries
6.2.2 Submarine cable networks
6.2.3 Satellite networks
6.3 Infrastructure developments
6.3.1 Wireless Local Loop (WLL)
6.3.2 IP and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
7. Internet market
7.1 Overview
7.1.1 Internet statistics
8. Broadband market
8.1 Overview
9. Convergence
9.1 Overview of media convergence
9.2 Pay TV market
9.2.1 Cable TV
9.2.2 Satellite TV
9.3 Digital terrestrial TV
10. Mobile communications
10.1 Overview of the Honduran mobile market
10.1.1 Mobile statistics
10.2 Mobile technologies and data services
10.2.1 Third generation (3G) mobile
10.3 Major mobile operators
10.3.1 Tigo/Celtel (Millicom)
10.3.2 Claro/Sercom (America Movil)
10.3.3 Hondutel
10.3.4 Digicel
11. Related reports
Table 1-Country statistics Honduras-2009
Table 2-Telephone network statistics-2008
Table 3-Internet user statistics-2009
Table 4-Mobile statistics-2009
Table 5-National telecommunications authority
Table 6-Market share of fixed lines in service-2003-2009
Table 7-Number of operators: fixed, mobile, data, ISP and CATV markets-2004-2007
Table 8-Hondutel-fixed lines in service-1997-2009
Table 9-Fixed lines in service and teledensity-1997-2008
Table 10-Public telephones-1997-2008
Table 11-Cybercafe and CCI points-2002-2007
Table 12-Internet users and penetration rate-1997-2009
Table 13-Internet subscribers and penetration rate-2002-2007
Table 14-Pay TV subscribers and penetration rates-2003-2007
Table 15-Mobile subscribers and penetration rate-1997-2009
Table 16-Mobile operators' market share-2002-2009
Table 17-Mobile prepaid/postpaid ratio-1997-2009
Table 18-Tigo-mobile subscribers-2000-2009; Q1 2010
Table 19-Claro-mobile subscribers-2003-2009
Table 20-Hondutel-mobile subscribers-2007-2009
Exhibit 1-Major submarine cable networks connecting Honduras
