Netflix To Offer Streaming Service In Central America, South America and the Caribbean

As I reported back in February, Netflix's plans to offer a streaming subscription service in Latin America and the Caribbean are now official with the company announcing the news this morning. Netflix says the service will be available in 43 countries but has not said when the service will launch. As I broke out in February, here is what the broadband penetration and speeds look like in some of these South American countries:

• Argentina: As of March 2010 the country had a 64% Internet penetration rate with 26.6M users with an average broadband speed of 3.33Mbps. 
• Brazil: As of Dec. 2009 the country had a 37.8% Internet penetration rate with 75M users with an average broadband speed of 4.46Mbps.
• Chile: At the end of 2009 the country had a 50% Internet penetration rate with 10M users with an average broadband speed of 6.62Mbps.
• Colombia: In mid 2010 the country had a 48% Internet penetration rate with 21M users with an average broadband speed of 4.32Mbps.
• Mexico: In 2010 the country had a 27% Internet penetration rate with 30.6M users with an average broadband speed of 3.54Mbps.
• Peru: As of June 2010 the country had a 27% Internet penetration rate with 8.8M users with an average broadband speed of 4.62Mbps.

In 2010, South America had a estimated population of just under 400M with 156M Internet users. Latin America had a estimated population of 154M with 38M Internet users. Depending on which territories exactly Netflix launches in, the company has the potential opportunity of expanding into a new market with a combined population of more than 500M users, with just under 200M of them online, with a combined average broadband speed of 3.2Mbps.

* Data on broadband penetration, population and download speeds were compiled from Wikipedia, the US Census Bureau, AMIPCI, ITU, eMarketer and SpeedTest.net