Vice President Amado Boudou appears to be a big Apple fan.

In this photo you can see him meeting with Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino.

But if you’re an Apple geek what you’ll notice about the picture is that Boudou’s desk is full of Apple products. He’s got 1) a big iMac 2) a wireless Apple keyboard 3) a wireless Apple touch mouse and 4) and iPhone 4 or 4S (bottom of the photo, implying it may belong to Lorenzino).

Boudou is also using a LaCie portable hard drive, which is made specifically for Apple computers.

These products are expensive and can be hard to find in Argentina. Indeed, the government banned iPhone imports a long time ago, forcing Argentines to get them from MercadoLibre or somewhere else.

The import restrictions have also made it hard for local Apple resellers to honor the company’s international AppleCare warranty. Dealers here can’t import the parts needed to fix Apple products. This has been very frustrating for some Apple owners, including many readers of this blog.

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This is footage of British Prime Minister David Cameron discussing the controversial dispute with Argentina over the sovereignty of the Falklands Islands.

Last week Cameron made the following remarks, which set off a firestorm in Argentina:

“”What the Argentinians have been saying recently, I would argue, is actually far more like colonialism because these people (who live on the islands) want to remain British and the Argentinians want them to do something else.”

Argentines reacted furiously, saying that no British prime minister has the “moral authority” to make such a statement given England’s own colonial history.

What do you think? Which position is correct? Which is more democratic? Does it matter?

Here’s a summary of the dispute by Al Jazeera.

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Argentina’s growing drug problem represents a major threat to the kind of peaceful political and social stability the country has enjoyed, with infamous exceptions, in recent decades.

Experts say crushing the threat early is crucial to overcoming it before related violence and corruption infect public officials and police forces as they have in other countries. Once the problem has corrupted a country’s judicial system, it is exponentially harder to eradicate.

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My colleague Matt Moffett wrote a feature for The Wall Street Journal on this and the rather strange events that have been taking place in Argentina in recents weeks. You can read it here.

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Subway ticket prices more than doubled today to 2.50 pesos (58 US cents) from 1.10 previously.

The increase comes just days after the federal government turned over management of the subway system to the City of Buenos Aires.

The day-to-day administration of the subway is carried out by Metrovias, a private sector company which has had a concession to run the subway since 1994.

Prices had been frozen for years while the cost of just about everything else in Argentina has soared amid rampant inflation that economists say surpasses 20% annually.

The federal government had kept prices artificially low by dolling out millions of dollars in subsidies every year. But now that the subway is in the city’s hands, the federal government will stop paying for those subsidies entirely in 2013.

This year the federal government and the city will split the cost of paying for the subsidies, which total about $167 million annually.

The subway carries around 300 million passengers every year, according to Metrovias. That’s double what it carried when the company started its concession.

Metrovias has some 3,000 employees, unionized workers whose demands for higher salaries and better working conditions will undoubtedly put political pressure on the city government in the years ahead.

My colleagues, Matt Moffett, Ken Parks and I did a feature for the Wall Street Journal on the topic and the broader issues of utility rates and subsidies, which you can read here.

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Netflix confirmed on Wednesday that it’s popular video and TV streaming service now works on Apple TV, iPhones and iPads in Argentina.

Can you do that, Cuevana?

On a related note, my buddy Brian Byrnes over at CNN recently interviewed Cuevana founder Tomas Escobar in English. You can see the video here.

Cuevana, of course, is the underground free video site that allows users to watch videos and TV series on their computers. The site has come under increasing pressure from production companies who say it’s an entirely illegal service.

Escobar claims Cuevana is akin to Google and simply puts users into contact with media content that is hosted elsewhere.

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OK, maybe not.

Still, Argentina’s biggest oil and gas company, YPF, has found a massive amount of oil in the province of Neuquen.

YPF on Monday confirmed the existence of almost 1 billion barrels worth of oil equivalent in the province. That’s not enough to turn Argentina into Saudi Arabia or even Montana and North Dakota, which have become the new stars in the world’s race to produce more oil.

Saudi Arabia reportedly has hundreds of billions of barrels in oil reserves.

But if the discovery is proven, it is enough to roughly double Argentina’s oil reserves and potentially help turn around the country’s position as an increasingly voracious energy importer.

Argentina’s oil reserves have fallen by about 16% over the past decade amid rising demand and relatively scarce investment in exploration and production, according to the Argentine Energy Institute.

YPF’s discovery, which I wrote about here, could soon help change that trend. Moreover, YPF said it has also outlined another area in Neuqen, where even more oil might be found.

The find comes amid a global boom in unconventional oil and gas exploration and production.

In the U.S., the boom has radically transformed the country’s energy outlook, taking what many said was a doomed domestic industry and possibly putting the U.S. on path to becoming energy indepdendent.

Argentina is ranked third behind China and the U.S. in its potential to produce unconventional gas – gas that’s extracted from incredibly old shale formations – according to a report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Link: My article on MarketWatch
And my colleagues at WSJ have another piece here.

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Almost nine months after Argentina confiscated a U.S. military plane, causing an unprecedented diplomatic mess, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and U.S. President Barack Obama met in Cannes, the famous city in the French Riviera.

(If you’re not familiar with the airplane scandal, click here to see an article I wrote for the WSJ. It was the paper’s most-read article worldwide for about three consecutive days.)

Obama called Kirchner “a great friend, not only of mine but of the United States.” The comment surprised many in Argentina and the U.S. who were so perplexed by the plane scandal.

The brief meeting took place on the sidelines of a G-20 summit.

Here’s a video – in both English and Spanish – of the two presidents speaking to the press.

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Claro, Argentina’s leading cell phone company, is rollling out a new 50 megabit, fiber optic broadband service.

The service is the fastest currently available for Argentine households, Claro said in a statement Tuesday.

“This new technology is already available in 3 de Febrero, Morón, Vicente Lopez, Avellaneda and Berazategui, where it currently offers 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 and 50 megas…,” Claro said.

The announcement comes just days after Grupo Clarin started offering its own 30 megabit service, known as Fibertel Evolution.

Fibertel Evolution uses a fiber optic network to deliver broadband to nodes located around the country and likely in your neighborhood (fiber to the node, or FTTN). The nodes then delivery Internet access to households using traditional coaxil cables. (Read more about Fibertel Evolution here.)

Claro said its “fiber to the home” or FTTH service is 100% fiber optic. Both carriers can increase speeds if demand calls for it.

Claro is expanding its coverage area not just in Greater Buenos Aires but also in Argentina’s interior, where some 300,000 homes already have access to the company’s fiber optic network. Claro’s service also allows for fixed-line telephone plans.

Initially, at least, the service will be limited to the areas listed above, making it a competitor to Fibertel Evolution only in select neighborhoods.

After years in the wilderness of painfully slow Internet access, the race for blazingly fast broadband is finally on in Argentina. Here’s to faster surfing for all!

For more information about Claro’s service, click here. For more about Fibertel Evolution, click here.

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Argentina’s Internet service provider, Fibertel, is now offering its new ultra fast 30 megabit download service, making Argentina the third country in Latin America to offer such fast broadband, according to Fibertel.

The new service, called Fibertel Evolution, offers upload speeds of up to 3M, about twice as fast as its previously fastest service.

Fibertel officially launched the service at a hip event in Recoleta on Tuesday, though the brand’s nationwide ad campaign won’t begin until October.

A Fibertel official said the service will cost 300 pesos a month for customers of the company’s cablevision TV service. It will be 450 pesos for everyone else.

Fibertel can increase the download speed to 100M and may eventually do so, depending on how consumer demand evolves in the coming months and years.

Evolution users will have access to exclusive technical support but will be limited to downloading 250G per month. Once that limit is exceeded, Fibertel reserves the right to reduce a user’s bandwidth speed to 6M until the beginning of the next month.

Fibertel invested 150 million pesos ($35.7 million) to build the backbone and infrastructure necessary to host the faster technology, known as Docsis 3.0. The new service relies in part on a new fiber optic network, which connects to household via traditional coaxial cable.

Evolution will initially be available in the City of Buenos Aires, Greater Buenos Aires, Campana, Zárate, La Plata, Santa Fe, Rosario, Córdoba, Paraná and Mar del Plata.

You can sign up for the service here.

If you sign up for Evolution, please share your thoughts about it here in the comments section.

Happy Surfing!

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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings provided new details on Wednesday about the company’s online video service in Argentina.

Among other things, Reed said Netflix aims to have all of its TV and movie offerings available in their original languages with subtitles and secondary audio options.

The video streaming company, which already has more than 25 million customers in Canada and the U.S, started streaming in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay on Wednesday, a day after it launched in Brazil. By the end of next week, Netflix will be offering its service to 43 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

For a look at why Netflix launched here before doing so in Asia and Europe, check out my article here.

For local readers, the key points are that Netflix will: (more…)

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Netflix, the U.S. film and TV Internet streaming company, will launch its service in Argentina on Wednesday.

The company will charge 39 pesos (about $9.28) a month for unlimited streaming.

Netflix launched its first Latin American service in Brazil on Monday and plans to expand rapidly throughout the region. For more details, click on the company’s official press release here or on Netflix’s blog here.

It’s unclear how much the local service will mirror Netflix in the U.S. Will the same films and TV shows be available or will intellectual property and distribution rights change the online library?

Will TV shows and movies be dubbed or have subtitles or some mix of the two? Will it be possible to view the streaming in HD?  Separately, how will Argentina’s Internet service providers and their relatively slow local bandwidth offerings stand up?

Netflix officials have been in the region studying its Internet infrastructure and are confident the service will work well. Rochelle King, Netflix VP of User Experience and Design, said the following in a blog post:

“We’ve licensed thousands and thousands of hours of feature films, classic favorites, gripping telenovelas, documentaries and kids shows we know you’ll enjoy.  We’ve been testing and figuring out the right internet architecture to make sure the quality and speed of the Netflix streaming experience is the best it can be.  And we’ve been training people locally to deliver the excellent customer support Netflix is known for in the U.S. and Canada.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will be in Buenos Aires on Wednesday to formally launch the service. I’ll be at his press conference. What would you ask him?

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