When a major telecom acquisition is announced, the press releases always sound the same. Investment. Transformation. Customer focus. A new chapter.
It’s not that it’s untrue. It’s that the real order of things rarely matches what appears on paper.
I’ve spent several years working on technology projects inside telecommunications operators — in Chile and in Europe. I’m not a market analyst. But looking at what is happening with Millicom, researching what they’ve done in other countries, and talking to people who have lived through similar processes, I find it hard not to have a formed opinion. Here’s what I think comes next — and when.
1. The context that doesn’t make the headlines
Movistar Chile was not a strategic sale from a position of strength. It was an exit.
The net loss at the close of 2025 reached USD 414 million. Debt stood at six times EBITDA — while Millicom’s internal benchmark is 2.5 times. That’s not a difference of nuance. That’s a company that needs oxygen before it can think about growing.
Why did it get there? Because Chile is one of the most competitive telecommunications markets in the region. Four operators concentrate 98% of data traffic and 99% of mobile telephony. In a market like that, the price war has no bottom. And whoever loses it pays for it in the balance sheet.
Add to that the fact that Telefónica had been in exit mode for years. Its 2026–2030 strategic plan contemplated a full exit from Spanish-speaking American markets. Chile was not an exception — it was the last piece.
2. The Millicom playbook — and why knowing it matters
Millicom doesn’t arrive to improvise. They’ve been doing exactly this for years: entering markets where Telefónica left complicated assets, applying their playbook, and stabilizing before growing.
They did it in Uruguay, in Ecuador, in Colombia. Today they operate in 11 countries in Latin America with more than 46 million customers. They know the process.
They bring in three people from the group — CEO, CFO, and CTIO — and work the rest with the local team. That’s not chance. It’s control over the levers that matter: finance, technology, and the face shown to the outside world. Everything else is negotiated with people who already know the market.
In Chile they brought in the CEO from El Salvador, the CFO from Paraguay, and the CTIO from Bolivia. The pattern repeats because it works.
3. What’s already happening — and it isn’t pretty
In the first weeks, at least 700 workers were let go.
All supplier contracts are being renegotiated. New terms: reductions on already-agreed amounts, longer payment deadlines. Several suppliers operating “day by day,” according to sources close to the negotiations.
This isn’t corporate cruelty — it’s the logical order. When you enter a company with that debt position, the first thing you do is stop the bleeding. And in a telco the bleeding isn’t only in network costs — it’s in years of accumulated contracts without financial discipline.
What usually happens in these processes is that the most qualified contractors — the ones who had been there for years and knew every corner of the system — start leaving. Those who come in to replace them are cheaper, but without the accumulated knowledge. And those who stay end up absorbing a workload that used to be spread across many more people.
This isn’t unique to Millicom. It’s a trend across the industry. Telecom margins no longer stretch to support large teams, and the recurring response is always the same: cut first, grow later.
4. What about the projects? — the question everyone is asking
Millicom’s bet is to transform Movistar Chile into a technology-focused company, with fixed-mobile convergence and B2B growth — cloud, cybersecurity, managed services for enterprises. They did it in Colombia with Tigo Business, reaching partnerships with Amazon Web Services for cloud services to SMEs and enterprises. It makes sense — B2B revenue is more stable and less exposed to the price war in the mass market segment.
But there’s a variable I think a lot of people ignore: timing.
The CEO of Millicom was explicit in an interview in February: the efficiency model takes approximately 12 months to execute. Only at the end of 2026 will they be able to visualize the investment plan for the following years.
What’s coming this year is order, not expansion.
That said, looking at what Millicom did in other markets and the current state of Movistar Chile, these are the areas most likely to activate afterward:
Mobile and fixed network. The CEO herself acknowledged it upon taking the role: they have mobile network deficiencies to address. That translates into infrastructure modernization, node deployment, and fiber expansion in areas where Movistar lost ground. A competitor like Mundo Pacífico already holds 20.8% of the fixed internet market with the highest annual growth in the sector — and it did so at someone else’s expense.
BSS and OSS platforms. The area that gets the least press coverage but generates the most internal work. When a regional group wants to standardize operations across 11 countries, it needs everyone running on the same billing, provisioning, and customer management platforms. Those migrations are long, complex, and with real customers on the other side the entire time. I’ve worked on this kind of project — the complexity isn’t in the technology, it’s in executing without the customer noticing anything.
B2B — Tigo Business Chile. The clearest medium-term project. To replicate the Colombian model in Chile, Millicom needs to integrate systems, build new commercial teams, and connect local infrastructure with the group’s regional platforms. This is not a six-month project — but when it kicks off, it will need people who understand both the telco business and technology execution.
5. What nobody says — and is worth saying
When a group of this size enters a new market, transformation projects are not executed by the internal team. Not because they don’t want to — but because that team was just reduced, is absorbing the change, and has its hands full keeping operations running.
The projects are executed by external vendors. Integrators, consultancies, profiles that understand how a telco works from the inside — not from a PowerPoint.
That’s where the real opportunity sits for the Chilean vendor ecosystem. Not in the day-one announcement, but in the projects that activate when the recovery period ends.
In the case of Millicom Chile, that moment will likely arrive in 2027.
Millicom didn’t come to Chile to do the same thing Telefónica did. It arrived with a different playbook, concrete regional experience, and a genuine long-term bet. That’s genuinely good for the market.
But the short term will be what it is: order, adjustment, and patience.
The interesting projects come later. And when they do, it will matter a lot who was already watching.
✍️ Claudio from ViaMind
Dare to imagine, create, and transform.
— Claudio
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