Cablevisión plans to offer a total of 20 HD channels by the end of the year and 30 by mid 2011.

Cablevisión chief executive Carlos Moltini confirmed the plans to The Argentine Post last week after a meeting with local bloggers.

Argentina’s leading cable TV provider is also working on plans to offer much faster download speeds to customers of its Fibertel Internet service.

Fibertel will offer Internet downloads speeds up to 10x faster than those currently available, Moltini said in the meeting. The company will offer the faster service by deploying the so-called DOCSIS 3.0 modem technology already used in the U.S. (more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Argentine Planning Minister Julio De Vido said Monday that the government will install free WiFi in public places around in the country within four months.

The news comes just days after De Vido announced that the government would give Fibertel, one of the country’s leading broadband providers, 90 days to shut down.

Critics will likely interpret the WiFi announcement as a last minute move designed to win favor amid what seems to be a massive rejection of the plan to kill Fibertel.

If installing free WiFi hotspots around the country were such a good idea, some may ask, why is the government announcing this now, just days after it said it would kill Fibertel? (more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

In a surprise announcement Thursday, Argentina’s government said it will kill Fibertel, the country’s leading Internet Service Provider.

“Fibertel doesn’t exist anymore,” Planning Minister Julio De Vido said at a press conference.

Of course, Fibertel does exist. De Vido was speaking idiomatically. Indeed, I posted this article to the web via Fibertel.

But if De Vido gets his way, Fibertel won’t exist three months from now.

De Vido said Fibertel, which is owned by the government’s sworn enemy, the media giant Grupo Clarín, is using an illegal license to operate in the telecommunications and broadband industry.

Fibertel has more than a million customers. De Vido said they now have 90 days to find another Internet service.

Despite the dramatic announcement, however, it seems unlikely that Fibertel will be dismantled within 90 days.
(more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Editor’s Note: If you like The Argentine Post and want more than you get here on this site, you might want to follow me on Twitter, where I tweet about all things Argentine.

Username: taos
URL: http://twitter.com/taos

Popularity: 1% [?]

The new iPhone 4 is a remarkable device.

It used to be that a multimedia journalist like me had to carry around a phone, a notepad, a camera, a videocamera and a digital audio recorder.

But these days that’s unnecessary. Thanks to the iPhone 4, you can can record audio interviews, take decent photos, shoot HD video and even edit it, compress it and export it, right on the phone itself.

To give you a taste of how this works, I took five minutes Sunday to shoot some footage for The Argentine Post.
(more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

It costs more to buy a TV in Argentina than anywhere else in Latin America.

According to a recent survey by IFR Monitoring, it costs 101% more in U.S. dollars to buy a 32″ HDTV here than in Chile and 113% more than in Colombia.

Now that’s something to be proud of….not.

IFR  did a comparative analysis of prices for a standard 32″ HDTV in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico and Uruguay.

The results show Argentina to be the most expensive place to buy a TV while Colombia is the least expensive. On a recent trip to Colombia I was struck by how much less expensive tech items are there. In many cases, prices were similar to those in the U.S., the mecca of consumer electronics.

But if the U.S. is the global heaven of consumer electronics, in terms of selection and pricing, Argentina appears to be Latin America’s consumer electronics inferno.

It’s ironic, to say the least, that in the U.S., the world’s richest country (according to some metrics), brand name tech products cost less than in almost any country in the world while in Argentina, where the minimum wage is about $380 a month (for a 48-hour work week), such products are among the most expensive.

The average price of a 32″ TV in the countries surveyed is $711. It’s $1,012 in Argentina and under half that – $476 – in Colombia.

In an unrelated survey published this week, IFR said it was “plausible” to assert, as Amazon.com has, that the sale of eBooks will surpass standard book sales by the end of 2011.

Of course, both Amazon and IFR were referring to U.S. eBook sales. Given price problems in particular, and broader macroeconomic challenges (including poverty) in general, this is unlikely to happen in Argentina for many years.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For those of you who got stuck with a locked iPhone – or for those with a friend whose iPhone is locked – a solution has arrived.

The Good Samaritans over at the iPhone Dev Team have developed a way to unlock the iPhone 3G and 3GS models.

Until now, if you were one those unlucky people who accidentally updated your iPhone OS and firmware, you may have lost the ability to use your phone in Argentina.

For reasons I won’t get into here, not everyone suffered this problem. But for those who did, you can now relax.

So, for those who know what I’m talking about here, you can solve your problem by looking for ultrasn0w version 0.93 within the Cydia program.

If you want to follow the Dev Team’s work, and keep pace with their latest hacks, click here to follow them on Twitter.

WARNING: If you have an unlock iPhone and want to upgrade to iOS4.0, DON’T, at least not yet. Wait for the Dev Team to fully develop its unlock package.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Ever get stuck in traffic in downtown Buenos Aires?

Or have you ever been stranded at the subway or train station waiting for a a ride that never seems to arrive?

This splendid new iPhone App may be of help.

It offers subway, traffic and train updates to keep you posted on transportation around the city.

Click here for download it for the iPhone. For the Android, click here. (I can offer no Android support, sorry.)

*Kudos to Emo for the heads up.

Popularity: 1% [?]

To experience the World Cup in style, I decided to buy a gigantic new HDTV.

But since these things cost a fortune in Argentina, I bought it in the U.S., where they typically sell for half or even one third of what they do here.

In February, I wrote about purchasing a new 40″ Samsung LED HDTV, which I brought down with me on American Airlines. This time I pulled the trigger on a new 55″ Samsung LED HDTV, an even bigger monstrosity which here in Argentina costs an obscene 20,000 pesos.

The box for his beast was huge. But it wasn’t tough enough to stand the flight. So I took the box to a packaging store and had it stuffed into a second box, this one double-packed with bubble wrap and extra styrofoam.
(more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Apple, the coolest computer and consumer electronics company in the history of humanity, announced Monday that on June 24 it will start selling the new iPhone 4 in the U.S.

But the stunningly feature-rich new phone may not be available in Argentina until September.

That, at least, is what local sites like InfoBAE reported Monday. I contacted local celular providers late Monday but was unable to confirm a local release date.

Among the phone’s new feature is “FaceTime,” which allows users to easily do live video chats using one or both of the phone’s new video camera lenses. Click here for more details and a video presentation.

Imagine being in the subway in Buenos Aires while using the Subte’s WiFi to video chat – for free – with a friend in New York or London. Wouldn’t that be incredible?

Given the phone’s dual-lens capability, your friend in New York could see either your face or look at what you yourself were seeing in the Subte. Pretty incredible, and it’s only a few months away.

As if that weren’t enough, the iPhone 4 can also shoot, edit and share video in 720p HD.

I’ll update this post when more release date details are available.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Perhaps surprisingly, given one of the worst global financial crises in decades, the use of pirated software declined in Argentina last year, according to the new Seventh Annual Global Software Piracy Study.

In 2009 about 71% of the software on Argentine computers was “trucho,” or pirated. That’s down from 73% the previous year.

Worldwide, pirated software usage rose to 43% from 41%.

Despite the improvement here, the vast majority of Argentines use pirated software.

That’s true in households, government buildings and businesses across the nation. Most “mom & pop” computer shops around the country routinely install pirated software for their clients.

To combat the problem, software producers offered a new approach, the report said: (more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

The iPad has gotten huge hype in recent months – and rightly so.

I’ve been testing it for several days now and can say, without any doubt, that it’s simply the greatest personal computer ever designed.

That doesn’t mean it does everything a personal computer does. It doesn’t. But it does extremely well what most people need: email and Internet. Plus, it offers stunningly good video, incredible applications and an incalculable number of related features. Meanwhile, new applications are being designed and released everyday.

The online world is replete with reviews. Here’s a decent one from the NY Times’ David Pogue. And here’s a very useful Q&A Pogue did with readers.

(more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]