Sharing Electric Power Poles
- Access to poles by SCM providers was one of the key factors for the growth of Competitives that serve more than 15 million homes with fiber.
- This growth has led in many cases to disorderly access to poles and a new regulation for sharing this infrastructure is under public consultation. Anatel intends to approve, together with Aneel, a new regulation in 2023.
- In this context, Enel, an energy distributor in the states of Ceará, Goiás, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, cannot be allowed to seek to restrict access to poles, charging an additional amount for installed equipment to what SCM providers already pay to use. According to Abrent, with this additional amount the amount paid by each provider can exceed R$ 70 per pole.
- Abrint had already filed a complaint to Anatel against the pilot project for sharing poles carried out by Ufinet, an Enel company, for restricting access to poles of other providers.
- It is necessary to organize the occupation of the poles, but access to this infrastructure placed in a public space cannot be allowed to stop being shared and become monopolized.
Oi
CADE published the ruling approving the sale of Oi Móvel to Claro, TIM and Vivo, making it clearer what would be the obligations before the sale was completed:
- Submit, individually and separately, for approval by the National Telecommunications Agency, the offers relating to the LTRO – National Roaming.
- Make available, individually and separately, the offers related to the Reference Offer - MVNO.
- Disclose, individually and separately, in a national newspaper, and prior to Closing, its public commitment to timely and fully comply with the agreement negotiated and approved with CADE.
Anatel published the acts approving the transfer of grants to use frequency that belonged to Oi Mobile to Jonava, Cozani and Garliava, which will be held by the purchasers Claro, TIM and Vivo, respectively.
CADE opened a process to investigate the complaint made by Public Prosecutor's Office about the sale of Oi Mobile.
V.tal has surpassed the mark of 15 million homes passed with fiber.
Oi's ON shares dropped 5.5% in the week and PN shares decreased 9.9%. The Ibovespa presented losses of 0.6% in the week.
5G
- Vivo, Claro and TIM have already constituted the 3.5 GHz Band Management Entity that will be responsible for the cleaning process of this band.
- Huawei was the company that registered the most patents in the world in 2021 (6,952), Qualcomm (3,931 applications), Samsung (3,041), LG (2,885) and Mitsubishi (2,673). (WIPO)
Other highlights
- With the heavy rains that hit the city of Petrópolis, about 10 ERBs of each of the four mobile operators were not working due to the lack of energy. (Anatel)
Coming Weeks
- Feb 22nd: Vivo's earnings release
- Feb 23rd: TIM's earnings release
- Feb 28th: I will be participating in another edition of Mobile World Congress 2022
Mobile in 2021
- Brazil ended 2021 with 1.2 million 5G cell phones operating on networks with DSS.
- Mobile telephony showed strong growth in 2021, with net additions of 19.2 million cell phones, 15.0 million of them are postpaid and 4.2 million are prepaid. Vivo led net adds, but lost market share.
- https://www.teleco.com.br/comentario/com980.asp
Fixed Broadnamd in 2021
- Brazil ended 2021 with 41.4 million fixed broadband accesses, 5.1 million more than in 2020. The competitive providers had net additions of 5.2 million accesses in the year and the group of large operators presented negative net adds. The number of accesses of Competitive Companies is likely to grow more in the next disclosures by Anatel due to underreporting.
- Alloha ended the year as the Competitive holding most of the accesses (1.1 million). Brisanet reaches the mark of 1.1 million accesses if its franchise brand Agility Telecom is added.
- https://www.teleco.com.br/en/en_blarga_comp.asp
- Since 2022, Teleco considers Small Porte Providers (PPPs) as "Competitives" according to Anatel's definition, no longer including TIM and A SKY in this Group. Anatel considers Vivo, Claro, Oi, TIM and SKY as large providers, the others are considered PPPs.
Claro in 2021
- Claro's net revenue increased 0.9% in 2021, being 7.2% in mobile and -4.7% in fixed services. With this result, mobile now accounts for 48.2% of Claro's revenue. This share reached 32.5% five years ago. Mobile services net revenue raised 8.1% in the year, but handsets revenue was 3.4% lower.
- Comparing 4Q21 with 4Q20, mobile revenue grew 8.0%, while postpaid revenue increased +9.4%. Pay TV and fixed voice revenues fell by 12.9% and 9.6%, respectively, largely offset by the 4.1% growth in broadband revenue and 9.6% growth in corporate networks.
- Claro intends to expand its fiber network by 3 million Home Passed (HP) in 2022. At the end of 2021, it totaled 3.2 million HPs in 168 cities.
- EBITDA margin hit 40.5% in 2021.
Oi
In a tight decision, Cade approved the sale of Oi Móvel with restrictions, which are part of a Concentration Control Agreement (ACC) negotiated with the companies, which foresees a wide set of measures that favor and facilitate the entry of new economic agents and the expansion of competitors in the SMP market.
The main obligations are:
- TIM, Claro and Vivo are expected to sell, independently and through a public offering, about half of the cell sites (antennas and equipment, excluding towers and passive infrastructures) acquired from Oi.
- Tim and Vivo, which will retain Oi Mobile's frequencies, will carry out offers for industrial exploitation of the network and frequencies leasing acquired from Oi in all Brazilian municipalities where there are potential interested parties.
- Reference offer of wholesale products for national roaming and for MVNOs who do not have authorization to use radio frequencies in all technologies.
The conclusion of Oi Mobile sale is expected to be delayed, as CADE has determined that it can only be carried out after the sale of the cell sites and offers for industrial exploration of network and frequencies leasing acquired from Oi. Delays have negative impact on Oi.
Anatel published an act transferring the authorizations for the use of frequencies from Oi Mobile to 3 SPEs, corresponding to what will remain for each of the purchasers.
Due to procedural issues, Anatel must hold a new meeting to approve the sale of Oi Mobile.
Oi's ON shares decreased 15% in the week and PN shares dropped 8.5%. Ibovespa appreciated 1.2% in the week.
Other Highlights
- Anatel decided to put to public consultation the same proposal to revise the rules for sharing poles that was put to public consultation by Aneel.
- Low-orbiting satellite constellation Starlink has announced prices for the service in Brazil. The plan with download speeds of 150-500 Mbps and latency of 20-40ms will cost R$ 530 by month, plus around R$ 3,000 to purchase the receiver.
- Anatel authorized two more constellations of low-orbit satellites to operate in Brazil: Swarm and Kepler.
- Carlos Baigorri and Artur Coimbra hearings carried out by the Senate Infrastructure Commission have been postponed. Meanwhile, Carlos Baigorri was appointed vice president of the Anatel's substitute president, Wilson Diniz Wellisch.
- 5G will overtake LTE as the dominant technology for private networks in the next four years, generating US$ 1 billion in annual revenue for RAN equipment supliers until 2026. (Dell'Oro)
- Operators funding requests to the U.S. government for replacing Chinese equipment on their network totaled US$ 5.6 billion, nearly three times the US$ 1.9 billion allocated by the governmen.
- Samsung announced its new Galaxy S22 smartphone models.
Coming weeks
- Feb 22th: Vivo's financial reports will be disclosed
- Feb 23th: TIM's financial reports will be disclosed
- Feb 28th: Mobile World Congress 2022
