It’s been known for sometime that Netflix was planning a Latin America launch, but that has now come to fruition. It has already launched in Brazil, and will be launching throughout Latin America and the Caribean over the next week. Netflix will be available to customers in 43 new countries and territories.

Until now, the service was only available in the U.S. and Canada.

“Getting to this day has been incredibly rewarding for everyone at Netflix – the passion and energy that have gone into building our Latin American service is amazing,” says Netflix VP of User Experience and Design Rochelle King. “Over the last few months, our team has spent countless hours in the region learning as much as we can about how Latin Americans think about, and enjoy, movies and TV shows.”

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NetflixNetflix launches in Brazil, and soon in the rest of Latin America. Link to blog: http://t.co/Omgl8Gp 21 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

“We’ve licensed thousands and thousands of hours of feature films, classic favorites, gripping telenovelas, documentaries and kids shows we know you’ll enjoy,” says King. “We’ve been testing and figuring out the right internet architecture to make sure the quality and speed of the Netflix streaming experience is the best it can be.  And we’ve been training people locally to deliver the excellent customer support Netflix is known for in the U.S. and Canada.”

In the U.S. prices just went up for users who were accustomed to getting unlimited streaming movies along with DVDs in the mail. The company has split this into two separate plans, which means users that wish to keep both of these plans have to pay 60% more than they were before.

Netflix also just lost its partnership with Starz, which has been the provider of a great deal of the more popular and recent releases on Netflix.

Netflix did announce a an expansion of its deal with Miramax to bring hundreds of titles to Latin America. Netflix has been streaming movies from Miramax in the U.S. since May.