Cellular service giant Tigo has formed an alliance with Walmart Centroamérica (headquartered in Costa Rica) to provide digital connection services to 830 sites, including stores, warehouses and offices in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Tigo, founded in Sweden in 1990, is the principal brand of Millicom, a leading cable and mobile services provider specializing in emerging markets such as Latin America and Africa. The alliance with Walmart is collaboration between various regional Tigo teams in the aforementioned countries.
Walmart first entered the Central America region over 15 years ago. A year later, in 2006 they became Walmart Centroamerica. In 2009, Walmart Mexico acquired all of Walmart’s operations in Central America from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In 2010, Walmart Mexico became Walmart de Mexico y Centroamerica with their headquarters in San Jose, Costa Rica.
As of now in Nicaragua, Walmart have total of 102 locations trading under 4 well known and distinct brands; Pali (71 locations), Maxi Pali (20), Walmart Supercenter (2) and La Unión (9).
The original Walmart brand, now “Supercenter” are the flagship stores and are in every Central American country where Walmart has a presence.
The Walmart owned supermarket stores are Pali and La Unión in Nicaragua, Mas x Menos in Costa Rica, Superpaiz in Guatemala and Honduras as well as La Despensa de Don Juan in El Salvador.
There are also the discount stores created that sell low priced groceries, household goods and appliances, such as; Maxi Despensa and Maxi Pali.
In early 2019, Millicom International Cellular (Tigo) began the purchase process to acquire Telefónica (Movistar) in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama.
At that time Movistar was a leading cellular service provider in Nicaragua and Panama, while in Costa Rica it was the second biggest mobile service provider (almost 2.5 million total clients). Millicom has operations in all three countries and expects that this will diversify and complement the services offered by the company in these markets.
