After the general meeting of Portugal Telecom SGPS shareholders was postponed, Oi said that while it supported the meeting delay, the sale of its stake in PT Portugal to Altice is the best alternative for the company. At the meeting, which was originally scheduled for Jan. 12, shareholders were to vote on whether to approve the sale.
In a material fact, the Brazilian carrier explained that the Committee of the Portuguese Securities and Exchange Commission requested additional information from Portugal Telecom on Jan. 8. Oi said it had provided all the requested information. The general meeting is now planned for Jan. 22.
On Jan. 8, Portugal Telecom disclosed a notice containing a summary of PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ analysis, as requested by PT’s board of directors. The full content of the notice can be found here. In Brazil, Oi said it will seek clarification from former chief executive Zeinal Bava, about the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report regarding an ill-fated investment by Portugal Telecom before the merger of Oi and Portugal Telecom.
On Jan. 14, the business newspaper Valor reported that the crisis at Oi is creating an opportunity for rival operator TIM Brasil to make an offer to buy the company. According to the paper, Marco Patuano, CEO of Telecom Italia, which owns TIM, will come to Brazil soon to meet the new minister of communications, Ricardo Berzoini. One of the topics of discussion will be a possible acquisition of Oi.
LTE numbers in Colombia and Brazil: Colombia ended the 2014 third quarter with nearly 809,000 LTE subscribers. In total, the country had 9.7 million mobile lines in September. In Brazil, the number of LTE accesses reached 3.6 million in November, out of a total of about 280 million mobile accesses, according to Brazil telecom regulator Anatel. Vivo leads, accounting for nearly 80.3 million lines, followed by TIM (75.3 million) and Claro (70.5 million).
América Móvil company fined: Mexico’s federal telecommunications institute, Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones, has fined América Móvil’s Telmex, alleging its merger with Dish represents a market concentration. América Móvil and Telmex objected to the IFT’s fine and are planning a legal challenge.
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More Latin American news:
MEXICO – Using the proceeds from the Iusacell sale, the Mexican broadcast TV operator Televisa bought the cable TV company Cablevision Red. Televisa reportedly paid about $204 million in cash and acquired another $490 million of debt and other liabilities of Cablevision Red, which has about 650,000 revenue-generating units.
CUBA – After reports about an upcoming Wi-Fi network deployment in Santiago, the country’s second-largest city, the Cuban state telecommunications firm Etecsa denied that it will offer Wi-Fi Internet service by the end of January. Instead, Etecsa plans to offer connection to a more restricted intranet.
PERU – Claro said there is no infrastructure to support MVNO operations in Peru, where the government had tried to increase mobile competitiveness by introducing mobile virtual network operators.
BRAZIL – Oi has partnered with Twitter and Facebook to provide zero-data access to subscribers of Oi’s Galera plan.
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