Teleco Blog

3
3/2019

MWC19 in Barcelona, Fixed Broadband, Pay TV and Fixed Tel. in Jan/19 and more

Eduardo Tude

5G, IoT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) were the dominant themes of the MWC 19

The focus on 5G was not in the launch of its first generation of networks, which aims to increase capacity in mobile and fixed BL. The big question is how to enable the new 5G applications using the features of low latency and slicing. The answer seems to go through IoT, with B2B business cases being the main candidates;
In other words, the success of 5G technology is tied to the success of IoT, which in turn presents more expressive results when associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI). The quest for low latency applications with 5G also raised the importance of "Edge computing";
Also noteworthy is the issue of Cybersecurity, which entered MWC's agenda due to political pressure from the US to prevent Huawei from being used as a 5G supplier. There seems to be a consensus among MWC participants that the issue should be resolved technically;
Huawei's CEO claimed his software has no backdoor. A detailed check made by the UK did not find anything in their software. Huawei has signed 30 contracts for 5G networks, Nokia twenty and Ericsson ten.

Fixed Briadband, Pay TV and Fixed Telephony in January

In Fixed Broadband, small operators (competitive ones) started the year holding net additions of 134 thousand accesses, followed by Claro (11 thousand). Vivo (-18 thousand) and Oi (-52 thousand) presented negative net adds;
Pay TV kept shrinking in January. Losses reached 143 thousand subscribers, being 89 thousand of them registered by Claro;
Brazil, also, continued to lose fixed telephones accesses in January (-639 thousand accesses). The bigger losses were registered by Oi (-361 thousand) and Vivo (-201 thousand).

Oi will receive US$ 667.2 million (R$ 2.48 billion) from the shareholders of Angolan operator Unitel. The decision in favor of Oi was made by the Arbitral Tribunal of the International Chamber of Commerce;
Oi's ON shares appreciated 14.3% in the week and the PN increased 11.5%.

Other Highlights

The GDP of information and communication services grew by 0.3% in 2018, less than the Brazilian GDP which grew by 1.1%;
Anatel's president Leonardo Euler said the 5G frequency call will be published this year and the auction will take place until March 2020;
TIM will exchange four members of its board of directors at the meeting to be held on March 28^th. Among them, João Cox Neto, who occupied the presidency of the council. João will take on the role of counselor for Petrorás;
Manifesto of representative entities of the sector has warned the City Hall of São Paulo and the City Council for the damages that the lack of licensing mobile telephony and internet antennas has caused to the municipality and to the local population. The last license was issued two years ago;
Anatel's Competition Superintendency has forwarded to the board the recommendation to AT&T to sell SKY within six months;
The Brazilian Supreme Court established in tem years the limitation period for filing a lawsuit for improper collection of non-contracted telephone services.

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).

☰

MWC19 in Barcelona, Fixed Broadband, Pay TV and Fixed Tel. in Jan/19 and more