Cable & Wireless Panama (CWP, +Movil) – which completed the acquisition of Claro Panama on 1 July this year – has confirmed that the two networks are now fully integrated. As such, calls between the two networks are now classified as being on-net and will be billed as such. Further, +Movil promises ‘a more robust mobile network’ for users of each network, who can now connect to the cell sites of both operators.
As per the Consumer Protection and Competition Authority (Autoridad de Proteccion al Consumidor y Defensa de la Competencia, ACODECO), however, the two companies are obliged to ‘operate separately and independently’ for ten months; this grace period expires on 16 January 2023, allowing a full operational merger to take place.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the Liberty Latin America (LLA) subsidiary agreed to acquire Claro Panama in September 2021 in an all-cash transaction valued at USD200 million. In April 2022, rival operator Digicel Panama announced that it intended to apply for voluntary liquidation and withdraw from the Panamanian telecoms market as a result of the merger, which it protested represented an ‘illegal economic concentration’.
At the time of the original announcement, Claro was said to serve 760,000 mobile subscriptions.