Latin shorts

- BellSouth is spending $25m to acquire 11% of StarMedia Network, a US-based internet portal which focuses on the Latin American market. The two companies will develop a Multiple Access Portal (MAP) using StarMedia's extensive content gathering experience. This alliance underscores BellSouth's commitment

- Motorola and its local partner, BGH, will resume production of handsets in Argentina, four years after it was suspended. The stimulus came from new government moves to reactivate the economy. Motorola believes that local production will give it the agility to raise its market share from 40% to 50%.

- Qualcomm has reluctantly agreed to take control of Vesper, a carrier which uses 1.9GHz CDMA cellular technology to provide fixed-line access in Brazil. Vesper was formed by Velocom (US), Bell Canada International and Qualcomm but BCI decided to pull out after it joined Telmex and SBC in the Telecom Americas alliance. Velocom could not raise the cash to buy BCI's stake and no other buyer could be found so Qualcomm stepped in. Vesper's business model has been dented by the massive growth of cellular services and by Brazil's decision to chose the 1.8GHz band for PCS. Currently it has about 500,000 subscribers.