The Argentine government has announced that it will investigate the sale of Telefónica's subsidiary in the country to the telecommunications group Telecom to avoid, it says, the creation of a monopoly. Telecom Argentina SA is one of the two main local telephone companies, the one that operates in the northern half of the country. The other half is dominated by the Spanish company Telefónica, which on Monday announced the sale of its business for 1.245 billion dollars (about 1.19 billion euros) to Telecom. The Spanish multinational's statement specifies that this operation is part of a strategy initiated in 2019 "to gradually reduce exposure to Latin America," where it operates in different countries, including Chile, Peru, Mexico and Colombia.