During 2011, 5.37 million Brazilians, both mobile and fixed-line users, have switched their telephone operators without changing their numbers. That's an 18.37% increase from 2010, when 4.54 million number portability requests were registered. According to ABR Telecom, the association that manages number portability operations...
Although 3G networks in Brazil's capital cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are newer than those in London, their perforance is worse. A recent survey conducted by Informa Telecoms & Media compared these three cities’ mobile broadband infrastructure.
“London has more subscribers and...
Brazil was the leading country in growth in Facebook users during 2011 among the top 30 countries by number of active users, according to researcher Nick Burcher, who has been collating Facebook usage statistics by country for a few years now. He noted that...
DirecTV’s Latin America subsidiary Sky Brazil announced its plans to acquire Acom Comunicacoes SA, provider of pay-TV and Internet broadband services through multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS).
Sky, which did not disclose the purchase price, announced its plans Dec. 4 to antitrust (CADE) and communications...
Brazilian carrier Oi said it has improved its network capacity to meet the growth in voice and data mobile traffic during New Year's Eve celebrations. Oi has turned over 15 radio base stations and improved the capacity of the current stations.
At Copacabana beach, located...
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We’ve collected a group of the industry’s leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry.
After years trying to modify the market dynamic by not subsidizing handsets, Brazilian operator Oi...
Brazil closed November with 236.1 million mobile subscribers, reaching teledensity of 120.81 connections per 100 people. Prepaid continued to account for the largest portion, 81.7%, and the trend may remain like that for a while.
According to data released by Brazilian telecom regulator Anatel, the...
Brazil's market for mobile virtual network operators may have at least three players after French mobile virtual network enabler Sisteer was granted a license to operate as an MVNx by Brazilian telecommunications regulator Anatel.
Sisteer was awarded the full authorization to operate as an MVNO,...
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
Brazil has finally awoken to the enormous opportunities in the machine-to-machine communications market. M2M communications are roughly defined as the...
Brazil has to improve the capacity of its backbone and backhaul infrastructure to support the increasing demand of data, said Informa Telecoms & Media and Brazilian consulting firm Teleco during a news conference held by information and communications technology company Huawei.
In a recent survey,...
The first South American global cloud computing platform for Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, was launched today in São Paulo, Brazil. This is the eighth geographic region worldwide in which the company has deployed its platform to offer suite of infrastructure Web...
DirecTV’s Latin America subsidiary Sky Brazil has become the first Brazilian company to launch 4G services. The country's largest satellite TV service has entered the broadband wireless market offering 4G wireless service based on TD-LTE (time division duplex long term evolution) network.
It is available...
Much of Latin America can now access Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store as the company launched its music store today in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.
The iTunes Store in Latin...
Nokia Siemens Networks has inaugurated a new center in Mexico to deliver remote services to operators across Latin America and around the world. The service delivery center will provide network design and planning as well as optimization and assurance for both networks and the...
The explosion in Brazil's class C population -- defined as families with monthly incomes of $660 to $2,850 -- has been accompanied by changes in consumer spending habits by members of that class, especially in the mobile phone market.
The Brazilian electronics industry will close this year with revenue of U.S. $73.7 billion (R$134 billion), an increase of 8% from 2010 but short of an initial expectation of 13%, nonprofit trade group Abinee said this week, citing a trade imbalance and a stronger real.
At an auction of frequency bands leftovers held by Brazilian telecom regulator Anatel on Dec. 6, carriers offered $132.7 million for 15 lots of frequency sub-bands used for the provision of personal mobile services.
The Brazilian unit of Spain’s Telefónica aims to be the biggest and best telecom provider in Brazil -- and that consumers recognize it as such. That might not be easy, because Telefónica Brazil faced serious problems with its Internet broadband service Speed in 2008, and it took some time to recover from the brand damage. However, the current scenario is brighter: Little more than one year after the mobile carrier Vivo’s acquisition, all Telefónica’s products will be rebranded under the Vivo name.
After buying telecommunications infrastructure operator AES Atimus Group in July for $1.03 billion, Telecom Italia’s Brazilian mobile unit, TIM Participações SA, on Dec. 5 announced TIM Fiber’s business plan for the next year.
Telecom operator GVT Holdings, owned by French entertainment and telecom group Vivendi, has been approved for a loan of U.S. $663 million (R$1.184 billion) from Brazilian development bank BNDES. The loan is intended to complement the company's investment plans through 2013, which are aimed at expanding current business areas and new cities, as well as pay-TV operations and implementing innovation in telephony services and Internet bandwidth range, content and interactivity.
Accustomed to the U.S. market, where banks have had no problems with buying standard ATMs, NCR Corp. has had to change to compete in the Brazilian market, where banks insist on customized machines.
Finnish telecom giant Nokia is planning to add its Asha series of Web-enabled cellphones and Lumia 710 to the array of devices manufactured at its Manaus plant in northern Brazil.
During a series of meetings organized by the Steering Committee of the Internet in Brazil and the Center for Information and Coordination Point BR, telecom operators disclosed target dates for providing IPv6 connectivity.
