There is no deadline set for ending the suspension of three Brazilian carriers that have been prohibited from selling new mobile services since July 23. Both the minister of communication (Minicom), Paulo Bernardo, and the president of Brazilian telecom regulator agency Anatel, João Rezende, said it will take the time necessary to evaluate the carriers’ action plans very closely. All three carriers — TIM, Oi and Claro — have already presented their action plans. “We are conducting several analyses, but we have no estimate of when we will release them to resume sales,” Rezende said.
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When Anatel announced the suspension, the watchdog agency gave the carriers 30 days to present action plans detailing their future investments to improve services. Until Anatel approves those plans, the wireless carriers cannot sell new services. TIM is not allowed to sell in 19 states, including Rio de Janeiro; Claro in three states, including the most populous state of São Paulo, and Oi in five states. Together, the three carriers account for around 70% of the Brazilian mobile phone market.
Rezende also said that the action plans are becoming better, as carriers and Anatel meet to adjust them to the regulator’s requirements. When asked about the main points carriers have to fulfill, Rezende listed measures to meet the traffic growth, relieve network congestion and solve call center problems.
“Wireless carriers have multi-year investment plans, but they can anticipate some of their investments. They must improve their services and how they manage their investments. Anatel has required concrete measures of quality service improvements,” Bernardo told press members during this week’s ABTA trade show and congress. He stressed that carriers must improve their customer relationships.
Bernardo, however, added that he understands operators’ complains about bureaucracy and the difficulty deploying infrastructure, such as installing antennas. “Our bureaucracy indeed is huge, and there are cities where it can take months or even years to get a license to install a tower. However, even if I agree with them about the towers, they cannot sell poor service,” he said. Bernardo noted that the government has worked to create a country-wide antenna law, with incentives to promote tower-sharing.
In a recent interview, Wally Swain, SVP at Yankee Group, criticized Anatel’s criteria. “While Anatel picked the guilty by taking the lowest rated operator in each state, somebody always has to be at the bottom. Does Anatel plan to continually shut off the bottom operator for a period of time until some other poor soul drops behind? This is insane! Worse, Brazil once again looks like a country which makes up the rules as it goes along to suit short-term political considerations with little or no consideration of the big picture,” Swain said.
From the government’s side, Bernardo said it was foolish not to act. “The Brazilian market has grown while the European market is decreasing,” he said. “What we cannot accept is that carriers make great profits while offering poor quality services to customers.”
Swain had also argued that the punishment could have been political, which Rezende and Bernardo have both denied. “To be fair to Anatel, I don’t know what they tried to do with the operators beforehand. But if I’m right, and this was a political grandstand invented at the last minute by the Minister, they probably did nothing,” Swain said.
“I do not see this [as a political decision]. Anatel has to ensure the quality of telecom services, and indicators have shown an increase in the number of complaints,” Rezende said.
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- Telecom Italia expects Brazil situation to normalize by next week
- TIM, Claro present action plans; TIM to invest $4.7 billion by 2014
- Analyst Angle: Anatel is customers’ hero for punishing operators but needs to go further
- Brazilian carriers’ action plans could impact telecom vendors
- Analysts question severity of Anatel’s Brazilian carrier suspensions
- Fallout begins for Brazilian operators after sales suspension
- Brazil suspends some TIM, Oi and Claro sales due to customer complaints
