The Mobile Economy Latin America 2025 (GSMA)

Summary

• Latin America has more than 450 million unique mobile subscribers.p.4
• Mobile technologies and services account for more than 8% of GDP, resulting in $550 billion of economic value added in 2024.p.4
• Productivity enhancements enabled by mobile amounted to $440 billion in 2024, and the ecosystem supports around 2 million jobs.p.4
• As of December 2024, 32 operators in 13 countries had deployed commercial 5G mobile services.p.12
• Mobile's contribution is expected to reach approximately $680 billion by 2030, or 8.6% of GDP.p.17
• The mobile ecosystem raised more than $50 billion through taxes in 2024.p.18
• Latin American operators are forecast to invest almost $90 billion in mobile capex between 2024 and 2030, accounting for 7% of global spend.p.14

Key insights

1. By the end of 2024, 64% of the population used mobile internet, equal to 413 million users.p.10
2. Only around 13 million people started using mobile internet in 2024, compared with an average of 23 million per year between 2015 and 2020.p.10
3. By the end of 2027 5G is set to account for a quarter of mobile connections, reaching more than 50% by the end of the decade.p.12
4. Average data traffic per mobile connection reached 9 GB per month in 2024, up from 2 GB in 2019.p.13
5. As of March 2025, 72 mobile operators had committed to Open Gateway APIs.p.15
6. The direct contribution of mobile operators and the ecosystem generated $90 billion of the economic value added in 2024.p.16
7. Brazil operators had deployed nearly 32,000 5G base stations as of the end of 2024.p.21
8. In Brazil, 87% of enterprises rated 5G as important to their digital transformation, compared with 79% in Argentina and 71% in Mexico.p.26