Vivo (telecommunications)

Telefonica Brasil S.A.
brand
Industry Telecommunications
Founded 1993 (Launched as Telesp Celular) (Vivo brand launched on 13 April 2003)
Headquarters São Paulo, Brazil
Key people
 Paulo Cesar Teixeira (CEO)
Products Fixed line, Mobile telecommunications, internet services and digital television
Owner Telefônica Brasil (a Telefónica subsidiary)
Website vivo.com.br

Vivo (IPA: [ˈvivu], Portuguese for "alive"), is a brand of Telefônica Brasil, is the largest telecommunications company in Brazil. It is headquartered in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

History

The company was originally formed as part of Telebrás, the state-owned telecom monopoly at the time. In 1998, Telebrás was demerged and privatized. Telefónica bought Telesp, the São Paulo division, and rebranded it to Telefónica. On 15 April 2012, all Telefonica services were rebranded again to Vivo, using the same strategy of unifying all its services in a unique brand, like Movistar (Hispanic America and Spain) and O2 (rest of Europe).

Vivo headquarters in São Paulo
Vivo building in the Rio de Janeiro

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Vivo brands

Vivo owns the following brands:

  • Vivo Móvel (mobile service)
  • Vivo Fixo (landline service, formerly Linha Fixa da Telefônica)
  • Vivo Internet Casa
    • Vivo Internet Fixa (ADSL broadband, formerly Speedy and Vivo Speedy)
    • Vivo Internet Plus (Cable broadband, formerly Ajato and Vivo Speedy)
    • Vivo Internet Fibra (FTTH broadband, formerly Speedy Xtreme, Fibra Banda Larga da Telefônica and Vivo Speedy Fibra)
  • Vivo 15 (long distance and international calling, formerly 15 da Telefônica and Super 15)
  • Vivo HDTV (satellite television, formerly Telefónica TV Digital, GVT TV and Vivo TV)
  • Vivo TV Plus (cable television, formerly TVA)
  • Vivo TV Fibra (FTTH television service, formerly Fibra TV da Telefônica)

Vivo Móvel

The Vivo brand was launched on 13 April 2003, as a mobile phone service provider. It's the largest provider in Brazil with over 76 million users.[1] It originated from the merger of several Brazilian mobile phone operations under a joint-venture owned equally by Portugal Telecom (PT) and Spain's Telefónica. Until 2006, the group was composed of six holding companies which, as announced in November 2005, merged into a single holding company, Vivo Participações S.A.. The operation was concluded on 22 February 2006. In July 2010, Telefónica bought PT's shares.[2][3]

Most of its network was initially based on IS-95, though there were parts of it that were still analog AMPS and parts (resulting from acquisition of other companies) using TDMA (IS-136). These are all being converted to GSM since 2006, when, after years being the only CDMA network, Vivo announced a GSM network, and that it would operate in both CDMA and GSM.[4] The CDMA network was gradually converted to CDMA2000 in the major cities. All CDMA network was discontinued on November 2012[5]

Today Vivo operates an UMTS, HSDP 3G networks and band 7 4G LTE in major cities.

Merged companies

The following operators merged to form Vivo:

Owned by Portugal Telecom

Owned by Telefónica

Acquired by the joint venture

New operations in the Northeast region

See also

References

  1. ↑ Folha de S.Paulo. "Com 763 milhões de cliente, Vivo lidera mercado com 288 de participação" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2009-12-21.
  2. ↑ Woolls, Daniel (28 July 2010). "Telefonica: new deal with PT to buy Brazil's Vivo". The Seattle Times.
  3. ↑ Paul Tobin; Anabela Reis (28 July 2010). "Telefonica Agrees to Buy Vivo Stake for $9.8 Billion". Bloomberg.
  4. ↑ "O que muda com a ida da Vivo para o GSM" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 18 May 2007.
  5. ↑ http://www.vivo.com.br/portalweb/appmanager/env/web?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=P1200158371317391404067&_nfls=false#
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