Osmar Corrêa Jr., Fontech’s sales representative in LATAM
What’s your role at Fontech?
My name is Osmar Corrêa Jr., I’m based in São Paulo, Brazil and I’m the Latin American Manager for Fontech. My experience in telecom market goes back many years, having worked for several large companies in the sector. If you’re looking for WiFi solutions within LATAM, I’d be happy to have a conversation with you!
What can you tell us about the current WiFi ecosystem in LATAM?
WiFi has many opportunities in this region! For example, the appearance of new MVNOs (MVNO subscriptions in Latin America are expected to reach 21.1m by year-end 2022). These MVNOs can come to wholesale agreements with telcos and other enterprises to purchase WiFi at a lower price than cellular, using WiFi as a complementary technology, or even implement WiFi First strategies. And in the same way, these wholesalers would be monetizing their WiFi networks!
In strong tourist destinations, such as Mexico or Peru, WiFi is set to play a significant role, being the must-have amenity for businesses such as hotels or resorts.
In other countries such as Brazil, operators like Oi have already implemented community WiFi as a way to complement coverage, provide users more ways to connect and in the end reduce churn, increase customer acquisition, and obtain revenues from non-subscribers.
What can Fontech offer LATAM?
Fontech’s Carrier WiFi Solution allows operators to deploy WiFi networks, and manage WiFi access based services just like traditional fixed and cellular services. Operators can leverage this network to implement different use cases such as WiFi On the Go or offload. One interesting feature about this solution is that it is vendor agnostic. This is key for this region: In countries such as Peru or Colombia, the vast majority of APs and CPEs deployed have been done by private owners or WISPs, hence leaving SPs with very limited control over this hardware.
But apart from offload or WiFi access to subscribers, SPs can even further monetize their WiFi networks among non-subscribers. SPs can grant WiFi connectivity under the business model they choose: in exchange for a paid pass or contact details, through free time-limited passes, after viewing an advertisement, or through wholesale agreements with MVNOs. For example, Brazilians seem pretty tolerant of online advertising, and as a result, advertisers spend 50% of their LATAM digital budgets in Brazil alone! This is something to consider in terms of monetizing WiFi. For example, WiFi can be offered to users in exchange for advertising impacts. The key functionality of Fontech’s solution in a monetization scenario is that it allows for an easy, centralized service configuration where multiple monetization schemes can co-exist or be applied differently according to network segmentation.
Regarding tourist destinations (as well as other venues), our Guest WiFi Solution allows operators to manage, operate, and monetize guest WiFi services on hotspot networks from one unique, centralized platform. SPs can segment networks into multi-level hierarchical structures and apply the desired guest WiFi business models and end-user WiFi experiences to each segment.
Want to understand more about how our solutions can empower you to maximize your WiFi strategy? Simply get in touch! And make sure you follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to be the first to know about exciting future announcements!