Mo­bile da­ta traf­fic is ex­pect­ed to grow sev­en-fold in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca by 2020 Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Plc (CWC) has ex­tend­ed its strate­gic part­ner­ship with Er­ic­s­son to trans­form the op­er­a­tor's 3G net­work and de­ploy 4G LTE tech­nol­o­gy.

The agree­ment en­ables CWC to con­tin­ue de­liv­er­ing mo­bile, da­ta and voice con­sumer ex­pe­ri­ences to over 6 mil­lion Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can con­sumers through­out 42 coun­tries. The agree­ment in­cludes the mod­ern­iza­tion of ex­ist­ing mo­bile ra­dio ac­cess and core net­work in­fra­struc­ture for all CWC's mar­kets.

Un­der the agree­ment, Er­ic­s­son cov­ers equip­ment and a range of pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, in­clud­ing project man­age­ment, sys­tems in­te­gra­tion and sup­port. It al­so in­cludes soft­ware up­dates that de­liv­er new ca­pa­bil­i­ties in ra­dio ac­cess, net­work man­age­ment and net­work con­trol. De­liv­er­ing the de­mand for high per­for­mance, in ad­di­tion to the grow­ing need for cov­er­age and ca­pac­i­ty, re­quires con­tin­u­al net­work evo­lu­tion.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the com­pa­nies said net­work per­for­mance is one of the most im­por­tant fac­tors for con­sumer sat­is­fac­tion and the com­pre­hen­sive trans­for­ma­tion of CWC's net­work in con­junc­tion with Er­ic­s­son is al­ready pay­ing off for the op­er­a­tor, with im­prove­ments in sev­er­al key per­for­mance and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion met­rics.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Er­ic­s­son Mo­bil­i­ty Re­port, by 2020, 86 per cent of all mo­bile da­ta traf­fic in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca will come from smart­phones, while 78 per cent of da­ta traf­fic in the re­gion will come from LTE. In ad­di­tion, mo­bile da­ta traf­fic is ex­pect­ed to grow sev­en-fold in the re­gion by 2020.

Car­lo Al­loni, EVP Tech­nol­o­gy and Group CTIO, Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, says: "Mo­bile broad­band da­ta is a key dri­ver for eco­nom­ic growth in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. The launch of next-gen­er­a­tion 4G LTE and 3G will en­sure our cus­tomers con­tin­ue to en­joy high speed ac­cess on a su­pe­ri­or net­work with un­par­al­leled cus­tomer ser­vice."

Al­loni al­so added, "The ex­ten­sion of our strate­gic part­ner­ship with Er­ic­s­son con­sol­i­dates our com­mit­ment to de­liv­er­ing high-qual­i­ty com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices to our cus­tomers and to work­ing to­geth­er to keep our out­stand­ing net­work po­si­tion. It is key for us to be work­ing with glob­al, in­no­v­a­tive ven­dors such as Er­ic­s­son."

Clay­ton Cruz, Vice Pres­i­dent, Er­ic­s­son Re­gion Latin Amer­i­ca & Caribbean, says: "With this agree­ment, we fur­ther strength­en our long-term strate­gic busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with Ca­ble & Wire­less by sup­port­ing them in meet­ing their com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lent ser­vices for their cus­tomers in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca."

"Ac­cord­ing to our world­wide bench­mark, CWC's re­gion­al mo­bile net­work ranks with the best-in-class world­wide. In a very com­pet­i­tive, Net­worked So­ci­ety, a net­work with su­pe­ri­or per­for­mance is one of the key dif­fer­en­tia­tors and a strate­gic as­set for op­er­a­tors. Our col­lab­o­ra­tion en­sures the de­liv­ery of a high-qual­i­ty mo­bile broad­band ex­pe­ri­ence," said Cruz.

Er­ic­s­son is present to­day in all high-traf­fic LTE mar­kets, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, Japan and South Ko­rea, and is ranked first for han­dling the most glob­al LTE traf­fic. Forty per­cent of the world's mo­bile traf­fic is car­ried over Er­ic­s­son net­works � twice as much mo­bile traf­fic as the clos­est com­peti­tor. Er­ic­s­son is first in LTE mar­ket share with­in the world's top 100 cities. More than 220 LTE RAN and Evolved Pack­et Core net­works have been de­liv­ered by the com­pa­ny.