Ranked as the largest wireless mobile technology in the Americas, its strong growth has seen it grasp 51 percent of the market, up from 38 percent the year before. In Latin America, isolated GSM is up from eight percent in 2003 to 66 percent today.  This momentum is set to continue.

Niklas Heuveldop, Vice President of Sales in the Americas for Ericsson's wireless infrastructure business, says: "The outstanding success of GSM and its evolution 3GSM (WCDMA-HSDPA) is based on the unparalleled acceptance these global standards have gained on a worldwide basis. The economies of scale obtained by infrastructure, chip-set and terminal vendors puts GSM and 3GSM network operators at significant capex and opex advantages over TDMA and CDMA operators."

TDMA is rapidly losing market share as operators throughout the region accelerate the migration to GSM networks. "TDMA networks are entering a maintenance mode, no significant new investments have really been made for quite some time now," Heuveldop says.

Whereas some CDMA networks, primarily in the US, still continue to grow, CDMA is also rapidly losing market share to GSM and 3GSM. In Latin America, CDMA operators accounting for more than 90 percent of the CDMA subscriber base are in the process of building out GSM networks. Twelve out of Latin America's top 15 CDMA operators have already taken the decision to migrate to GSM. The most recent announcement by South America's single largest operator, Vivo, with 30 million subscribers, to build a GSM network represents a significant blow to the CDMA community.

However, Verizon and Sprint have both been very successful with their CDMA offerings in the US, so it clearly is not primarily a technology issue.  Both service providers have been very innovative and to a large extent have ignited the value-added services market in the US, showing strong subscriber growth and non-voice revenues.

Nevertheless, Sprint and Verizon are suffering from limited economies of scale. As the relative market share for CDMA continues to fall, the evolution of CDMA becomes uncertain. "The decision by Sprint to select WiMAX as their next-generation access technology creates significant uncertainty about the future of CDMA," Heuveldop says. "Can the vendors justify the R&D investments required to keep up with the pace of innovation of the industry? It will be increasingly difficult for the vendors and service providers in the CDMA community to remain competitive, except for niche applications."

 Looking forward, WCDMA/HSDPA, the evolution of the GSM standard, is set to make the biggest splash. Already the leading industry standard for the delivery of 3G voice and data services, it has been deployed by 111 operators in 54 countries, with a further 66 networks planned. Since launching in North America last year, take up has been strong. Latin America is expected to mirror this trend as mobile and fixed wireless broadband services fill an untapped demand for internet connectivity, substituting and/or complementing ADSL or cable access. Market research in various markets also indicates significant interest emerging in multimedia services such as full-track music downloads, video calls and mobile TV.