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LatAm Wrap-Up: Vivo targets postpaid and data, claims it follows antitrust rules; Nextel cuts jobs

Despite a recent negative antitrust ruling, Vivo, the Brazilian unit of Spanish Telefónica, views 2013 as a good year. The carrier focused on increasing its postpaid base and encouraging data usage (the MultiVivo offering is one example). In Brazil’s LTE space, Vivo has the largest presence, having launched commercial services in 73 municipalities—Vivo offers 3G in 3,131 cities and has connected 1.7 million homes with optical fiber. During a press conference, Telefónica Brazil’s CEO, Antonio Carlos Valente, reiterated the company’s commitment to expanding LTE coverage and growing its postpaid base, especially for data usage, as well as expanding its fiber network (the corporate segment and IPTV are targets).

Valente avoided giving much information about last week’s decision by the antitrust regulator Cade, telling Telefónica to leave TIM or find a new Vivo partner. “There’s nothing much to evaluate at this moment,” Valente said. The CEO mentioned Telefónica’s entry into the Telco holding company, which controls TIM, back in 2007, reinforcing that the Spanish group has been conducting regular operations in compliance with the law. “During this period, both companies have worked properly, competing in all markets. Therefore, we have built a reputation showing that we respect the rules,” Valente said.

Nextel job cut: NII Holdings, which operates under the Nextel brand in Latin America, announced a plan that includes reduction of more than 25% of the staff at the company’s headquarters and the elimination of more than 1,400 positions in its market operations. NII Holdings expects to incur cash costs related to employee severance in the range of $25 million to $35 million. In addition, Nextel closed on the sale of 1,483 communications sites in Mexico and 1,940 sites in Brazil to the American Tower Corporation.

AMX in Mexico: Mexico’s telecom regulator has begun proceedings to determine whether América Móvil is a dominant company in the telecom market. The carrier received a notice from the Federal Telecommunications Institute (Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones, or “IFT”), regarding the initiation of a proceeding for the determination of preponderant economic actor in Mexico’s telecommunications market and possible imposition of regulatory measures.

LTE in Latin America: Informa Telecoms and Media released a review of the LTE landscape in Latin America. The consultant firm estimates that as of 3Q13, there were 820,000 LTE subscriptions in the region. After tracking LTE deployments across 10 countries and 161 price plans, Informa found that the average price for a smartphone LTE plan was $67 (taxes included), and for a modem or tablet LTE plan, it was $37.

The study concluded that operators have opted to be conservative in the design of their LTE plans, segmenting only per type of device and offering volume-based plans. Informa noted there is a risk to this approach since pricing plans can be easily compared across different operators, which in turn, can lead to a price war once the competition gets tougher in the 4G market.

PricingLTE

More news from the Latin American region:

ABOUT AUTHOR

Roberta Prescott
Roberta Prescott
Editor, [email protected] Roberta Prescott is responsible for Latin America reporting news and analysis, interviewing key stakeholders. Roberta has worked as an IT and telecommunication journalist since March 2005, when she started as a reporter with InformationWeek Brasil magazine and its website IT Web. In July 2006, Prescott was promoted to be the editor-in-chief, and, beyond the magazine and website, was in charge for all ICT products, such as IT events and CIO awards. In mid-2010, she was promoted to the position of executive editor, with responsibility for all the editorial products and content of IT Mídia. Prescott has worked as a journalist since 1998 and has three journalism prizes. In 2009, she won, along with InformationWeek Brasil team, the press prize 11th Prêmio Imprensa Embratel. In 2008, she won the 7th Unisys Journalism Prize and in 2006 was the editor-in-chief when InformationWeek Brasil won the 20th media award Prêmio Veículos de Comunicação. She graduated in Journalism by the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas, has done specialization in journalism at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain, 2003) and Master in Journalism at IICS – Universidad de Navarra (Brazil, 2010) and MBA – Executive Education at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.