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Vivo busy in lively Brazil market

Brazil is an exciting place to be if you love music and color, and today it is also an exciting place for mobile operators. Vivo has been the market leader in this burgeoning market for some time and aims to keep it that way.

June 2, 2005

Recently, the operator chose Ericsson to manage its field operations encompassing almost 2000 sites so it could focus on getting an even bigger piece of Brazil’s mobile market pie.

 

With more than 40 percent of Brazil's 66 million mobile subscribers, Vivo, a joint venture between Portugal Telecom and Telefónica Móviles, is by far the largest mobile operator in Brazil. While mobile penetration is high in the big cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasilia, the country average is still low at 36 percent. So there is plenty of room for growth and a very diverse market.

 

But it is not just subscriber growth that interests Brazil's mobile operators. In the metropolitan areas, where the market is reaching a European level of maturity, operators are also looking for other revenue sources. SMS messaging is popular, and in a country known for its lively music culture, ringtones are hot. In 2004, a massive 80 million ringtones were downloaded, generating USD 7 million in royalties for the music industry alone.

 

Growth at such a high rate, however, demands focus. Vivo's move to outsource its field operations will allow it to concentrate on strengthening its position in a market that remains highly competitive. One of the main advantages for operators in a managed services deal is that they can significantly reduce operating expenses. Vivo chose Ericsson for its industry leadership in managed services, and extensive local competence and knowledge of both Vivo's existing CDMA and TDMA networks.

 

Ericsson will deliver field operation services for the next two years in a multi-vendor, multi-technology environment including both core and radio networks.Ericsson has so far helped 45 operators worldwide to make their networks more cost-effective and flexible, and to improve performance and speed through a range of customized managed services agreements. These cover operations, as in this case, with long-term service level agreements; risk-and-reward sharing in managed capacity deals; and hosting that includes applications, enablers (MMS, streaming media, prepaid, push–to-talk) and hosted payment exchange, as well as content, such as music, entertainment and games.