PCS Digital Nicaragua

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PCS Digital Nicaragua, a unit of Mexico's America Movil, launched its mobile services in December 2002, after receiving its license September 19, 2002. It contracted Ericsson in October 2002 to build out its nationwide 1900 MHz GSM network and spent $42 million for this. America Movil, through its subsidiary Servicios de Comunicaciones de Nicaragua, S.A. (Sercom), received the PCS license from regulator Telcor after it took away the license from Azteca Holdings, the original winning bidder in the March 2001 auction at $8 million, on the grounds Azteca acquired it through corruption. As the second highest bidder, America Movil received the license for a price of $7.14 million. PCS Digital will also have to pay the regulator 2.5% of future earnings. The network will initially be setup with a switch to allow for up to 60,000 connections, with total network capacity of 250,000 lines. In July 2006, Sercom officially merged with Enitel, project #2773. 2003 - 2005 investment figures were obtained by distributing America Movil's investment in facilities by the number of total subscribers for each project - thus investment is a proxy given other regional investment of America Movil.