Teleco Blog

22
11/2020

Number Portability, IoT, 5G and other highlights of the week

Eduardo Tude

Number Portability

Claro is the operator that gained more mobile clients over the last 12 months among those that ported their numbers from other carriers. Oi and TIM had negative performance in this matter. (Source Anatel);
This result helps to understand Claro's leadership in postpaid net adds without M2M;
In fixed telephony, Claro (2 million), Vivo (869 thousand) and Oi (798 thousand) registered gains in ported numbers along this period.

IOT

The Brazilian Senate approved zero Fistel fee for IoT devices. Companies will no longer have to pay Fistel, Condecine and CFRP fees. The project made by deputy Vitor Lippi had already been approved by the Chamber and is now going to be sanctioned by the president;
This measure is essential for the growth of IoT in Brazil and has been one of the flags in the sector;
IoT is in full growth in the world reaching 11.7 billion connected devices in 2020 (IoT Analytics);
In 2020, IoT connections (for example: connected cars, smart home devices, connected industrial equipment) overtook non-IoT connections (smartphones, laptops and computers);
Chinese mobile operators are responsible for 75% of cellular connections to IoT (M2M). In 2020, LPWA connections totaled 423 million, of which 44% NB-IoT and 41% LoRa.

Streaming

The Alliance Against Pay TV Piracy (“Alianza”) announced the results of the second phase of Operation 404, of inspection against content piracy. 252 sites and 65 streaming applications that illegally broadcast to more than 26 million users were blocked or suspended.

Top 10 video streaming services in the U.S. are (Parks):

Netflix
Amazon Prime Video
Hulu
Disney+
ESPN+
HBO Max
Apple TV+
CBS All Access
Showtime
Starz

Oi's cash generation was negative by R $ 284 million in September;
Oi's ON shares appreciated by 2.8% in the week and PN by 11.1%.

More highlights

The Federal Senate approved the Bill 172/2020 that allows the FUST to be used to expand the Internet access infrastructure and not only in telephony as provided by the law in force. Congratulations to Congress, it is now up to the executive to regulate the use of resources;
Padtec's gross revenue in 3Q20 (R$ 84.8 million) was 32.1% higher than in 2Q20;
Qualcomm has received an export license from the U.S. government, allowing it to supply certain components to Huawei. The permission covers 4G chips, but not 5G. (Reuters);
Ericsson's CEO criticized Sweden's decision to ban 5G auction participants from using Huawei and ZTE equipment.

Coming Weeks

Telco Club 2020 (December 2^nd)

8
11/2020

Results and accesses in 3Q20, TIM, 5G, Oi and others

Eduardo Tude

Vivo, Claro and TIM's mobile services revenue grew 3Q20/2Q20, recovering losses from the previous quarter;
Claro presented the biggest growth (+ 8.1%) when comparing 3Q20 with 3Q19. In this period, TIM's mobile services revenue grew + 0.4% and Vivo's presented a loss (-1.0%);
Claro includes Nextel in every quarter.

Results 3Q20: TIM

TIM's net revenue grew 1.2% when comparing 3Q20 with 3Q19;
The EBITDA margin was 47.3% and net profit was R$ 320 million in 3Q20;
Investments of R$ 850 million fell 8% compared to 3Q19.

Results 3Q20: Telebrás

Telebrás' net revenue was R$ 70.8 million in 3Q20, an increase of 20.2% compared to 3Q19. The growth is associated with an increase in the use of satellite in the GSAC program;
The loss fell from R$ 108 million in 3Q19 to R$ 18.2 million in 3Q20.

Fixed Accesses in 3Q20

The competitive ones led the growth of fixed BL accesses (+659 thousand), followed by Claro (+83 thousand) and Oi (+70 thousand). Vivo presented negative net adds (-158 thousand);
Pay TV lost 13 thousand subscribers, with Vivo (+123 thousand), SKY (+68 thousand) and competitive (+17 thousand) showing positive growth;
Brazil lost 991 thousand fixed telephones in the quarter.

Mobile Accesses in 3Q20

Vivo led net adds of cell phones (2.3 million), followed by Claro (1.5 million);
Vivo led prepaid growth (1.5 million), while Claro, TIM and Oi presented negative net adds in this segment;
Claro led the growth in postpaid (1.9 million), followed by Vivo (844 thousand);
Postpaid (114.7 million) surpassed prepaid (113.6 million) in 3Q20 thanks to the 27.6 million M2M terminals included in postpaid. The number of postpaid used by people (87.4 million) continues, lower than the prepaid one.

Claro announced the offer of 5G using dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) in 12 more Brazilian cities: Campinas, Santos, São Caetano, São Bernardo do Campo, Santo André, Guarulhos, Brasília, Goiânia, Manaus, Belém, São Luis and Porto Alegre;
Korean operator SK Telecom (SKT) ended 3Q20 with 4.26 million 5G cell phones, which represent 14.7% percent of its cell phone base. KT ended 3Q20 with 2.8 million 5G mobile phones.
Tests conducted by Opensignal indicate that the speed of 5G in Seoul, the capital of Korea, is greater than 300 Mbps on the three operators and the availability of about 30%.

The Oi Mobile auction will be held on December 14th at 14:30 as determined by the Judge responsible for Oi's judicial reorganization process. No surprises are expected and it must be acquired by the consortium formed by Vivo, TIM and Claro.
Oi's ON shares appreciated by 10.3% in the week and PN by 16.5%.

More highlightas

The decree was published naming Vitor Elísio Menezes as executive secretary of the Ministry of Communications and Arthur Coimbra as secretary of telecommunications;
Abraão Balbino will take over as a substitute advisor in the vacancy on Anatel's board with the end of Vicente Aquino's term;
Anatel celebrated its 23rd anniversary this Thursday (Nov. 5th);
A fire in a Macapá substation meant that the capital and 14 cities in the state were without power for several days. There is still no forecast for the date of power restoration in the state. This event, as well as what happened a few years ago in Florianópolis, when the city was powered only by a power cable, reinforces once again the need to invest in redundancy in the electricity and telecommunications networks, as recommended by good engineering practices;
Cyber attack on the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) took down the Court's website and blocked access to files and computers;
Equinix has expanded the peering offer to its two datacenters in Rio de Janeiro and hopes to serve as redundancy for IX.br users.

Coming Weeks

Oi's 3Q20 results in November 12th;
Whow! Innovation Festival 2020, in which I'll present the theme: “THE CITY OF THE FUTURE IN 5G LOGIC”. On 12th at 17:30.

1
11/2020

Results 3Q20, Vivo, Smartphones and more highlights in the week

Eduardo Tude

Results 3Q20: OTTs x Operators

OTTs revenue (Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft) grew more than 10% in the annual comparison, with the highlight being Amazon (37.4%);
The operators' revenue growth was between 5% and -12%.

Results 3Q20: Vivo

In Brazil, Vivo's net revenue decreased by 2.3% when comparing 3Q20 with 3Q19. Net revenue from mobile services decreased by 1% and fixed services by 6.6%. Fixed broadband revenue (0.6%) and handset sales (10.1%) increased;
EBITDA margin reached 40.1% and net income hit R$ 1.2 billion in 3Q20;
Investments of R$ 1.8 billion decreased 25.8% compared to 3Q19.

Smartphones in the World in 3Q20

Samsung regained leadership in smartphone sales worldwide in 3Q20 (80.4 million), followed by Huawei (51.9 million);
Xiaomi (46.5 million) surpassed Apple (41.6 million) and took third place.

TIM started a pilot test of 5G DSS for fixed broadband for about 300 customers in the cities of Bento Gonçalves, Três Lagoas and Itajubá;
Claro has plans to end the year with 5G available in 12 cities using dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS);
Americanet conducted a test of 5G technology with Nokia in the 3.5 and 26 GHz bands.

Oi ended August with R$ 5,392 million in cash, R$ 246 million less than in the previous month.
R$ 528 million were invested in August, of which R$ 298 million in Oi Mobile.
Oi's ON shares lost 7.7% in the week and PN shares 12.7%.

More highlights

The decree appointing Carlos Baigorri to Anatel's Board of Directors was published. Councilor Vicente Aquino's term ends this week (11/04);
Anatel has decided that accredited MVNOs can enter into agreements with more than one operator to use their networks;
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released two reports of its assessment of Brazil: "Recommendations for regulatory advances for telecommunications and broadcasting" and "Digital economy in Brazil";
Decree 10.531/2020, which instituted the Federal Development Strategy (EFD) for Brazil for the period 2020-2031 includes telecommunications between strategic sectors;
TIM and Fiat Chrysler announced a partnership for connected cars in 1Q21;
ELLaLink might put its Brazil-Europe cable into commercial operation in the second quarter of 2021.

Coming weeka

Results 3Q20: TIM in Nov. 3rd and Oi on Nov. 12th.

Eduardo Tude

President and partner at Teleco (consultancy company), works since 2002 as analyst of Telecom market, coordinating consulting projects, publishing weekly articles, preparing sector reports and presenting workshops.

Telecom Engineer (IME 1978) and MSc. in Telecom Engineering (INPE 81), Tude is member in the Mobile World Congress’s judging commission for the Global Mobile Awards, in Barcelona, and was also a visiting specialist professor at Unicamp.

Tude had many positions in the management of Telecommunication companies in areas like Mobile Systems (Ericsson), Optical Networks (Pegasus Telecom) and Satellites (INPE).

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Number Portability, IoT, 5G and other highlights of the week

Results and accesses in 3Q20, TIM, 5G, Oi and others

Results 3Q20, Vivo, Smartphones and more highlights in the week