Slim's pickings

摘要

Some emerging market carriers have benefited by originating in and dominating massive home territories, others have grown scale by operating in markets that offered challenging returns to carriers fighting for position in wealthier, more familiar climes, while some Middle Eastern carriers are expanding now thanks to sheer financial clout. America Movil enlarged its footprint through canny acquisition, buying lucrative, undervalued operations, usually from 'Western' carriers operating in Latin America who needed to finance battles at home. A similar strategy was employed by Telefonica Moviles and has rendered Latin America something of a two horse race. The company was formed in its current guise in September 2000 as the result of a spin-off from Tel-mex (Telefonos de Mexico), Mexico's largest provider of local and long distance telephone services. At that time, America Movil had operations in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador and the US and was serving just over ten million customers.