In a month when Anatel, Brazil’s telecom regulatory agency, banned three telecom operators from selling mobile services for ten days, the country registered the lowest growth rate since 2006: with only 279,723 new active lines  added in July. Brazil now counts a total of 256.41 million of mobile lines, of which 53.95 million have 3G access.
Follow RCR Wireless News—Americas on Twitter, Facebook and subscribe to our free periodic newsletters
Besides the low addition of new customers, Anatel’s latest report also showed numbers from the MVNO Porto Seguro for the first time, even though it has not officially launched services in the country. The insurance firm Porto Seguro was the first Brazilian company to unveil plans to enter the mobile virtual network operator market. In a recent interview, general manager Tiago Galli told RCR Wireless News, that the launch of wireless services would occur during the second half of 2012.
According to Anatel, Porto Seguro counts 2,000 accesses, all of them machine-to-machine. The company did not respond to interview requests to explain whether these accesses are related to trials it is conducting.
From July 23 to August 2, Anatel prohibited TIM, Claro and Oi from selling mobile services in certain states. The lowest rated operator in each state was subject to the ban. TIM was not allowed to sell in 19 states, including Rio de Janeiro; Oi in five states and Claro in three states, including the most populous state, São Paulo. The measure was criticized by some observers, but many people approved.
In July, the mobile line base increased only 0.11% over June, which is the lowest growth rate since 2006, when Telefónica-owned Vivo cleared its inactive user base, and the country registered a reduction of 0.67% (617 million lines) in the total mobile users.
According to the report, Vivo kept its leadership with 76,181,210 mobile lines (29.71%), followed by TIM with 68,672,340 (26.78%), Claro (63,075,082 or 24.60%), Oi (47,661,864 or 18.59%), Algar Telecom (744,798 or 0.29%), Sercomtel (73,496 or 0.03%) and Porto Seguro (2,000).
Regarding technologies, GSM still represents the big share with 76.19%. However, 3G accesses have increased, totaling 53.95 million. Anatel counts both data terminals and WCDMA. No LTE accesses were computed.
M2M terminal data account for 6,174,000 or 2.41% of the total technology market share. In June, there were 5,960,831 accesses.
