Brazil's newest MVNO is a bank
Telecom regulator Anatel has granted J. Safra, the investment arm of Brazil's Banco Safra, a license to operate as mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the country.
J. Safra Telecomunicações will use Claro's network in the first such deal brokered by the América Móvil group in Brazil. To date, local MVNOs have been using either the networks of TIM or Vivo.
The Safra Group was once the main shareholder of BCP, a telecom operator sold to the Mexican group Telmex, which later came to control Claro.
In February last year, J. Safra acquired 11.4% of the preferred shares of Oi, currently under judicial restructuring. One month later, it increased its stake to 16.47% and later reduced it to around 9%.
This will be the first MVNO operated by a Brazilian bank.
A local insurance group, Porto Seguro, launched the country's first MVNO in 2012, initially offering machine-to-machine (M2M) services and moving on to mobile and data plans one year later.
It is now the largest MVNO in the local fray, but still has less than 0.5% of the mobile phone market, with 635,000 customers at end-May.
Safra's license covers the development of the personal mobile service, in the private regime, but the group will likely concentrate its operations on M2M services because of its point-of-sale machine Safrapay.
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