Wanda, the mobile money joint venture between Telefónica and MasterCard, launched in Argentina, eyeing the millions of wireless users who don't have a bank account. Wanda is expected to reach approximately 10 million transactions by the end of 2012.
Announced earlier this year, the m-payment...
The Colombian unit of Spain’s Telefónica has unified its services under the brand Movistar. The move includes its fixed telephony, broadband services and satellite TV, and follows the company’s international direction of offering its services under three brands worldwide – Movistar, O2 and Vivo.
In Colombia,...
When Germany auctioned LTE frequencies in 2010, operators were required to first deploy the high-speed internet technology in rural areas before deploying to the more lucrative urban areas.
Now having met many of their rural obligations, carriers are complaining of bureaucratic delays for their big...
When the European Parliament voted on May 10 to place new caps on roaming charges, they included data services for the first time.
Telefonica was the first major carrier to respond. The very next day, the Spanish-owned carrier, known as O2 and Movistar to many...
Telefónica’s Latin American earnings surpassed its earnings from Europe for the first time in the Spanish group's history. The telecom operator announced first quarter 2012 earnings of 15,511 million euros, while operating income before depreciation and amortization (Oibda) dropped 8.8% to 5.08 billion euros...
In the same week that Spanish telecom giant Telefónica announced a $502 million (Bs 2.16 billion) investment in its Movistar unit in Venezuela, the Argentinian government fined it about $41.7 million (185 million pesos) for a massive service outage there in April.
In Argentina, Planning...
After 18 months working on the Vivo integration, Telefonica announced that starting April 15 all Brazilian products, including mobile, fixed, pay-TV and broadband services for consumers and enterprise segments, will be re-branded under the Vivo name (which means "Alive" in English). Currently, Brazil is Telefonica's biggest...
Brazilian carrier Vivo, owned by the Spain's Telefónica, expanded its HSPA+ services to nearly all of Brazil’s states, except for Roraima and Amapá. The business offerings started April 4 under the commercial name "3GPlus."
Vivo is Brazil’s largest mobile operator with nearly 30% market...
To the potential delight of wireless operators, a new report from ComScore shows that a significantly higher percentage of iPhone users in the United States and United Kingdom rely on their device’s Wi-Fi capabilities than customers with Android-powered smartphones. This would be positive news...
Spain's Telefónica(NYSE: TEF) said Monday it has reached an agreement with Colombia's government to merge fixed-line operator Colombia Telecomunicaciones (Coltel) with mobile operator Telefonica Moviles Colombia.
Telefónica owns 52% of Coltel, with the Colombian government controlling the remaining 48%. Under the agreement, the Colombia government...
Virgin Mobile Latin America (VMLA) has secured U.S. $26.5 million in new equity funding to develop its regional business and launch mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) services in Chile.
The new funding consists of equity from existing shareholders, including the Virgin Group and ePlanet Capital,...
“Cloud computing is a fantastic way to sell more data.” By stressing this definition, the director of innovation at TIM Brazil, Maurício Cascão, defined the telecom operator’s strategy in launching cloud computing services offers in the country. Cascão said, during the TM Forum Latin...
América Móvil's Claro and Telefónica's Movistar, new entrants to Costa Rica’s wireless market, have appealed to the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications (Minaet) to extend their network rollout deadline. Local paper El Financiero reported both telecom operators said they are facing difficulties installing...
Qualcomm and Telefónica announced an agreement focused on fostering the adoption of 3G and smartphones throughout Latin America. Under terms of the agreement, both companies will collaborate in an effort to bring a variety of 3G devices to the region, including smartphones enabled by...
Telefónica Group's Brazilian operations announced plans to cut 1,500 jobs. The announcement followed a pair of government decisions ordering the group to pay fines for not meeting service quality agreements.
The job cuts are part of the group's integration process that began in mid-2010, and...
Spain's Telefónica announced the launch of a regional cloud hosting service targeting the Latin American corporate segment, including large companies and government.
Named "Virtual Hosting 2.0," the offering is supported by VCE’s VBlock infrastructure and will be provided through five interconnected data centers across...
Latin America's telecom sector is clearly in need of infrastructure investment. Gartner expects the Latam telecom sector to see double digit growth rates this year in traffic, demand and investments as carriers rush to meet the challenges of data and voice traffic growth, which...
As part of their "synergy" to integrate operations, Brazilian telecom operators Embratel, which belongs to América Móvil, and Telefónica's Vivo announced changes to some of their brand names.
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Embratel’s residential television and fixed-telephony services will...
BARCELONA, Spain – Emerging markets and the carriers that serve those areas took center stage, literally, during day two of this week’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain, as leaders from India’s Bharti Airtel, Telefonica’s Latin American operations and VimpelCom talked about the...
Indian telecom major Bharti Airtel lacks green agenda in its investments in Africa, Greenpeace Tuesday stated in its briefing paper on International Green Telecom Leadership.
Spain’s Telefónica announced LTE deployment atMobile World Congress, saying it will use Alcatel Lucent's LightRadio technology in the 2.6Ghz frequency band. Deployment is expected to begin in Chile and Brazil.
According to the company, the service will provide download speeds of 100 Mbps, and...
Strong growth of wireless data revenues across its Latin America business helped push Telefónica's 2011 total consolidated revenues up 3.5% in 2011 to $84.56 billion, which was in line with analyst estimates, and net profits of $7.27 billion.
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The m-payment joint venture between Telefónica and MasterCard (MA) has a brand name: Wanda.
The offering is expected to provide mobile payment solutions to more than 87 million Movistar customers in the 12 markets where it will operate. The JV was created to develop...
Telefónica Digital tapped Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase and a SAP company, to be its global, strategic partner on providing mobile wallet services, which will be the gateway for its customers to a wide range of mobile financial services. Telefónica expects to...
