3G Americas has announced recently that the number of mobile connections in Latin America managed to pass over the 500 million mark during the fourth quarter of the last year. Moreover, it seems that around 91 percent of the connections were based on GSM-HSPA technology, with a number of more than 464 million such connections reported in Latin America at the end of 2009.

The number of GSM-HSPA subscriptions went up by 64 million in Latin America during the last year, it seems, with 9.4 million subscriptions being 3G connections. According to 3G Americas, Brazil is a market where GSM technologies have registered an impressive growth, as a number of 28 million new connections were made during 2009 alone.

“Mobility serves more than half a billion users in Latin America where the average wireless penetration already exceeds 86 percent,” said Erasmo Rojas, director of Latin America and the Caribbean for 3G Americas. “Citizens of the region are now connecting to the broadband Internet world with 3G HSPA high-speed mobile data networks. By the end of 2009, the adoption of these mobile broadband wireless services increased rapidly in Latin America with an annual growth that surpassed 200 percent, nearly 14 million HSPA subscriptions and commercial networks by 52 operators in 24 countries.”

It seems that the GSM-HSPA technology is the most popular telecoms solution in North America too, as it adds the largest number of subscriptions than any other wireless technology. During 2009, 13.6 million new subscriptions were added in the equation, and 8 million of them were made during the fourth quarter of the last year alone. “GSM-HSPA operators in the U.S. had a great fourth quarter, adding more subscriptions than in the previous three quarters combined,” said Mike Roberts, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. “Across North and Latin America, GSM to HSPA accounted for 73 percent of mobile subscriptions at the end of 2009, up from 70 percent at the end of 2008.”

The GSM-HSPA technologies are reported to have reached 89 percent market share all around the world, with a number of 4.17 billion subscriptions. The number of 3G UMTS-HSPA subscriptions is said to be of more than 450 million all around the world, on 345 commercial networks in 139 countries, representing 10 percent of the entire GSM technology market.