The Brazilian unit of Telefónica, Vivo, has announced the launch of an over-the-top, on-demand video service. Called Vivo Play, it is Telefónica’s latest application for access to entertainment content via the Internet, aiming to meet mobility needs.
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Telefónica’s move follows a loss of market share in the pay-TV segment. As Antonio Carlos Valente, president of the Telefónica Brazil group, noted during this week’s company press conference, it happened due to some reformulations the company took over the past few months, such as a platform migration of its IPTV.
During October’s Futurecom event, competitor Claro launched a streaming movie service that offers on-demand content to battle over-the-top players.
As Telefónica highlighted, mobility is one of the key differentiators of its application, since it can be accessed from various technological devices with an internet connection, such as smartphones with the Android OS, personal computers, tablets, Xbox (the video game console from Microsoft) and connected TVs from Samsung and LG.
Valente noted in a statement that with the launch of Vivo Play, the company reinforces its commitment to business and entertainment video. He also noted that Telefónica will intensify converged service offerings. “This is an irreversible trend in the market,” he stressed.
The app features a content library, for which the customer pays a fixed amount per month and gets access to a catalog of 3,500 titles, including movies, TV series, cartoons, documentaries and music, and others.
In addition to its new internet-based video on-demand services, Telefónica also released its plan to expand fiber optic networks throughout 2013. Antonio Carlos Valente noted LTE network deployment and expansion of households served with ultra-fast internet connection via optical fiber are two of the company’s priorities for next year.
Currently, Telefónica optical fiber network, which is available to about 1.2 million households, is accessed by 106,000 customers. The company did not unveil its expansion target; it just mentioned that it might be toward the country side of the state of São Paulo.
