12/27/2022
2022: Was it better than 2021?
2022 was considered great/good for 62%% from our readers who answered Teleco's annual pool, this percentage was higher than in 2021. On the other side, the percentage of those who think 2022 was bad or worse (13%) also increased.
Growth in the first 10 months of 2022 was lower than in 2021 for mobile and broadband, while pay TV and fixed telephony continued to show subscriber losses.
. Source: Anatel. Fixed broadband growth in 2022 may be higher due to underreporting of Competitives in Oct/22.
Mobile telephony presented net adds of 6.6 million cell phones in the accumulated of the first 10 months of 2022, despite Vivo having disconnected around 3 million cell phones acquired from Oi Mobile, mostly prepaid (2.2 million). These cell phones were considered inactive, according to the criteria adopted by Vivo.
The highlight was M2M, which presented net adds higher than those registered in the same period of previous years, and for the growth of 4G, technology used in 78% of cell phones in Brazil.
Fixed broadband grew less than previous years, but net adds may rise to around 2.5 million when underreporting is eliminated.
However, the growth in fiber accesses continues to be strong, with net additions of 4.1 million accesses, while the other technologies registered losses, mainly xDSL (-1.4 million). In Oct/22, fiber represented 65.8% of fixed broadband accesses in Brazil.
Telecom revenue grew by 6.7% in the first 10 months of the year, more than the 4% in the same period of 2021.
Teleco listed at the beginning of the year the following themes to be followed in 2022 (click here for details):
- The beginning of operations of the 5G networks was a success. The liberalization of the 3.5 GHz spectrum allowed the offer of high-speed 5G in all Capitals of Brazil and, in Oct/22, 5G cell phones already represented 1.7% of the total number of cell phones in Brazil. Brazil appears among the countries with the fastest 5G in the world in measurements by OpenSignal and Ookla;
- The new competitive scenario after the sale of Oi Mobile presents a greater concentration of the market, but Vivo, Claro and TIM maintained their relative positions in the various segments;
- Oi left the judicial reorganization in Dec/22 and Nova Oi will face a series of challenges in 2023, among them the renegotiation of its debt, arbitration of the value of the sale of Oi Mobile, conversion of the fixed telephony concession into authorization, resume of revenue growth and improve margin, which reached 6% in 3Q22;
- The process of consolidation of the fiber companies advanced, mainly in September 1st. However, it will become clear that this is an ongoing process that may last for the coming years;
- Companies with open network infrastructures have started operations but are finding it difficult to grow beyond their anchor customers;
- Internet of Things solutions continue to advance in Brazil. M2M accesses for IoT grew 23% in the last 12 months;
- The same happens with MVNOs, which showed a 45% growth in their number of cell phones in the last 12 months.
Also worth mentioning:
- The approval, by the Congress, of the Law that limited the ICMS for telecommunications to 17% or 18%;
- The advancement of the Norte Conectado Program, by the activation of Infovia 00 (Macapá - Santarém) and the great demand from companies to participate in the open consortium for this Infovia and Infovia 01 (Santarém - Manaus).
An important point, but which ended up being left for 2023, was the definition of the conditions for the migration of fixed telephony from concessions to the authorization regime.
You could ask:
- Was 2022 a good year for Brazilian telecimmunications?
- What should we expect from 2023?
What will be the impact of 5G?
- What will change the the competitive scenario in 2023?
