Mobile network ecosystem
The mobile phone industry in Honduras has been dominated by oligopolies. However, this concentration has not necessarily served to improve access and use of this technology in Honduran citizens, as mentioned in studies published by GSMA. According to their data from 2017, "In the last 15 years, the adoption and deployment of mobile broadband in Central America has suffered a lag with respect to the rest of Latin America." Despite this lag, mobile penetration is 87.57 percent in Honduras. Yet, the mobile ecosystem of “mobile networks, infrastructure service providers, retailers and distributors of mobile products and services, device manufacturers and content providers, applications and mobile services” (GSMA, 2017) can still be considered fragile when taking into account the current market set-up and state regulation policies.
The mobile market is growing rapidly and according to Celtel (2017) "The country already has more than 8m mobile connections, of which almost 30 percent are from smartphones. In turn, the 4G deployment is expected to grow rapidly from 88,000 connections at the end of 2015 to 1.4m connections in 2020." The contribution of the telecommunication sector to national GDP has been significant. The mobile ecosystem generates around US$300m per year in financing to the public sector in taxes. According to data from the telephone companies, there is a projected investment of US$200m in 2018. According to the members of the telecommunications companies, the regulatory and compensatory policies of the Honduran state negatively affect the mobile ecosystem in the country. And yet large rural areas of the country remain "unattended or with low or little cell phone signal", especially in areas of indigenous territories, such as the Mosquitia Hondureña, where the population does not have access to this technology.