Telgua

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Telgua was created in 1996 from the assets of the state-owned company Empresa Guatemalteca de Telecomunicaciones to provide the basic telephone services (local and long distance) in the country. The company also offered mobile phone services using a PCS license since May 1998. A first attempt to privatized the company was made in 1996 when Telmex offered US$ 529 million for the company. The government rejected Telmex's offer and called for a second option because the offer was lower than the minimum offer required by the government (US$ 700 million). In a second attempt, the company was privatized in October 1998 when the government sold a 95% stake for US$ 700 million to Luca SA consortium. Telgua was also transferred with US$ 240 million of debt obligations. In 1999, Telmex acquired 49% of the Telgua's holding company. In 2000, America Movil, a spin-off of Telmex owned 92%. By September, 2000, the company had 209,000 mobile phones and over 630,000 fixed lines. Its fiber optic network was of approximately 1200 kilometers. By 2002 America Movil held 96 percent of the project. By 2002, the company had 628,000 subscribers and 804,000 fixed lines. By 2003, America Movil increased its stake in Telgua to 100 percent. The number of fixed lines increased to 930,000 in 2003. The wireless arm of Telgua, Sercom, uses GSM capacity for its wireless services. In 2003 Sercom selected Nortel Networks to deploy a nationwide GSM system. The additional capacity, via a 3G wireless network, was expected to triple capacity and allow Telgua to provide fixed wireless telephone services. Sercom had 1.9 million wireless subscribers at the end of 2005. !!! 2011 Investment Figures Missing !!! 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 & 2009 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. 2007 Capex is an estimation based on the information obtained from the sponsor's 2007 annual report (amount of capex) as well as projections from 2006 (on the aggregate for Central America and Carribean capital expenditure)