The state of Brazil’s telecoms race

Region-wide telecom operators now account for half of Brazil’s growing fiber broadband market, while mobile lines expanded for the second consecutive month in July, bolstered by postpaid migration, fresh data from regulator Anatel shows.

The country's pay TV segment continues to lose steam as users cancel contracts and migrate to streaming services, even though a new methodology for counting satellite pay TV by the watchdog indicates growth in the overall customer base.

BNamericas takes a look at the highlights of Brazil’s telecoms industry based on the latest statistics.

ISPs RULE

The country ended July with 39.4mn fixed broadband accesses, 4.7mn more than in July 2020, and upping penetration to 55.7% from 49.1%.

Over end-June, there was an increase of 300,000 new clients, Anatel data shows.

Fiber broadband accounted for 57.5% of total July accesses, followed by coaxial cable and copper, with 23.7% and 13.3%, respectively.

América Móvil’s Claro continues to lead the market, with a 24.8% share, followed by Telefónica’s Vivo (16.1%) and Oi (13.3%), but small internet service providers (ISPs) or regional operators together accounted for 40.3% of all accesses. 

In fiber, ISPs had a combined 50% share in July, with Vivo leading individually with 18.3% of accesses, followed by Oi with 14.5%.

For the first time, regional operators and ISPs were responsible for half the total fiber connections in the country.

Among the largest of the ISPs, Brisanet had 3.3% of July fiber clients, followed by Algar (2.9%), Unifique (1.6%) and Desktop (1.5%).

MOBILE ON THE RISE

The mobile segment recorded growth for the second month in a row, with 246.8mn lines at end-July, up from 225.9mn a year before and 245.4mn in June. 

Penetration grew to 101.4%.

Vivo led with 33% of mobile lines in service, followed by Claro (27.6%), TIM (20.9%) and Oi (16.4%). 

All four players’ numbers remained stable over June, although TIM and Oi lost participation and Claro and Vivo grew on an annual basis.

Oi is expected to be acquired by Vivo, TIM and Claro, and its clients, spectrum and mobile antennas split among the three buyers. 

The acquisition, however, faces strong resistance from smaller players and still depends on clearance by Anatel and antitrust regulator Cade. 

In terms of technologies, 4G accounted for 77.1% of the total July lines, nearly 6 percentage points more than in July 2020. Postpaid contracts were 52.2% of the total, up from 50.4% a year earlier.

PAY TV REBOUNDS?

After a long run of disconnections, the pay TV market saw unusually strong growth in July, adding 2.5mn clients for 16.4mn in total. As a result, penetration grew to 23.2%.

The increase, however, is related to a change in the methodology as Anatel considered certain satellite DTH services as pay TV plans, distorting the figures.

DTH accounted for 56.8% of all accesses in July, ahead of coaxial cable (35.3%) and fiber (7.9%). 

IpTV (fiber) is effectively the only technology with organic growth in the market, leveraging on the sale of channels bundled with residential fiber plans by carriers.

Claro leads the pay TV market with 44.5% of all accesses, followed by AT&T’s Sky – recently sold to Argentine Grupo Werthein – with 24.8%, Oi (21.4%) and Vivo (7.1%).

Source of bar charts: Anatel