Brazil: Wireless Boom Continues

BY JOACHIM BAMRUD

Brazil’s wireless telecom market, the largest in Latin America, is growing faster than experts and telecom industry officials alike had predicted and will continue expanding at strong levels, UK-based bank HSBC says in a new report on the sector. However, a worrisome trend is the decline in average revenue per user (ARPU).

“Mobile growth continues in Brazil, with net additions having grown so far in 2008 at an average pace of 1.9 million per month – this is a rate 83 percent higher than what we observed in, e.g., H107,” the bank says in its report today.  

Vivo, the top operator, boosted subscribers by18.2 percent. Its rivals did even better in percentage terms. Telemar’s subscription base expanded by 29.7 percent, Claro’s by 26.7 percent, Telecom Brasil’s by 25.8 percent and TIM’s by 23.7 percent.

All in all, there were 130.6 million wireless subscribers in Brazil in May, an increase of 21.9 percent from the same month last year, according to the official telecom agency Anatel. 

And the trend is expected to continue the rest of the year as well. “In our...

Keywords: ARPU, double-counting, number portability, penetration