América Móvil, which owns Claro, NET and Embratel in Brazil, confirmed its interest in making a common offer with the carrier Oi to acquire the operator TIM Brasil. Oi has already released a material fact announcing that it has engaged Banco BTG Pactual to review alternative options to acquire shares of TIM, which is owned by Telecom Italia. Since Oi doesn’t have enough cash for the acquisition, the carrier would need partners, such as the Mexican giant telecom group América Móvil. There are rumors that the rival Spanish group Telefónica may also be interested — even though, it has just closed a deal with Vivendi to buy its Brazilian unit, GVT.
While the idea has often been floated to split TIM into several parts and sell them separately as different companies, it might not be possible. Sources from Brazil’s telecom regulator, Anatel, told Teletime that the agency wouldn’t allow such a division.
Dominant player: América Móvil should sell assets in Mexico worth an estimated total of U.S.$3.7 billion to reduce its dominant position in the market. Under Mexico’s new telecom reform legislation, no company can control more than 50% of the country’s telecom market. According to the newspaper El Financiero, AT&T is the leading candidate to purchase the assets. The bank Banamex came up with the estimated amount after determining that América Móvil would have to get rid of the 21.4 million mobile lines to cease being a dominant operator. According to Banamex, the asset sale would enable América Móvil to reduce its stake in the mobile market, although it would not resolve all of the company’s regulatory difficulties.
Chilean mobile landscape: Mobile lines in Chile reached a total of 23.4 million users in June. According to the telecommunications agency Subtel, carriers currently cover more than 95% of the country’s inhabited territory. In contrast, fixed telephone lines decreased 2.5% during the period of Dec. 2013 to June 2014; between June 2013 and June 2014 the drop was 3.8%. As for Internet services, Chile has a 55.9% access penetration (fixed and mobile) with a total of 9.9 million lines.
Telecom Italia rethinking Argentinian sale: Telecom Italia’s plan to sell its stake in Telecom Argentina to investment fund Fintech for U.S.$960 million may not happen. The company’s CEO said that if the Argentinian government continues to delay approval of the sale, the deal could fall apart.
Smartphones in Mexico: Mexico has a total of 42 million smartphones, which means the country’s mobile market has been growing at an annual rate of 76%, according to the Competitive Intelligence Unit. The graphic below shows how brands are losing and gaining market share in Mexico.
More news from the Latin American region:
- Portugal Telecom shareholders approved the new terms of the company’s merger with Brazil’s Oi. The terms were revised following the Rioforte default.
- The Chilean minister of transport and telecommunications, Andrés Gómez-Lobo, announced that the Chilean congress will consider a bill to create a secondary market for spectrum. The measure would allow unused spectrum bands to be offered through existing dealers to other operators. Any new sale will still retain the obligations of the original grant.
- The city of Buenos Aires has approved a bill that will tax over-the-top (OTT) players. Starting on Nov. 1, the city will collect 3% of every subscription to OTT streaming services.
- ICT development and infrastructure investment in Colombia helped the country to climb three steps higher in the the World Economic Forum’s Competitiveness Report. The country jumped from 69 to 66 during the past year.
- Millicom’s Tigo bought the pay-TV operator Cablefusión in Guatemala.
- Tigo launched LTE services in Bolivia. Currently, the carrier has 1.57 million Internet customers, of which 785,000 own smartphones.
- Colombia plans to have a fiber optic submarine cable in the Pacific in 2015. According to the project jointly presented by Level 3 and Emcali in March, the cable will be operational in the second quarter of 2015.
- Seaborn Networks and Alcatel-Lucent started construction of the Seabras-1 submarine fiber optic cable system between the United States and Brazil.
- Conatel, the Venezuelan telecom regulator, expects the total investment in 4G infrastructure by public and private telcos in the country to reach approximately U.S.$2 billion within the next five years.
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