Which mobile operator registered the biggest growth in 2022?
Source: Anatel
The net additions of the three main mobile operators in the 11 months of 2022 (Jan-Nov/22) were driven by the acquisition of Oi Mobile cell phones, which took place in Apr/22.
TIM was the operator that got most cell phones from Oi Mobile (16.3 million). In spite of that, Claro was the leader in mobile net adds in this period (15.1 million), followed by Vivo (13.9 million). TIM was the only one that presented net adds lower than the total number of cell phones acquired from Oi.
Brazil ended November 2022 counting 255 million mobile accesses, the same amount as at the end of 2021.
Source: Anatel
Prepaid showed negative net adds of 7 million accesses in this period, which were offset by positive net adds of postpaid accesses without M2M (2.6 million) and M2M (4.3 million). Note that with this result, mobile density, excluding M2M, dropped from 103 cell./100 inhabitants to 100 cell./100 inhab.
The drop in the number of mobile accesses in Nov/22 happened due to an adjustment promoted by TIM and Claro. From the 5.4 million disconnected by TIM, 1 million were not inside area codes having customers acquired from Oi Mobile. At Claro, about 1.1 million disconnected mobile accesses were almost entirely inside area codes Oi Mobile operated.
In Sep/22, Vivo had already disconnected about 3 million cell phones acquired from Oi Mobile, mostly prepaid (2.2 million).
These adjustments are made annually by operators, in order to reduce expenses with the annual inspection fee (Fistel) of approximately R$ 13.40 per cell phone at the end of the year.
The three operators had prepaid net adds smaller than the amount acquired from Oi.
Source: Anatel
In postpaid without M2M, Vivo and Claro net adds surpassed the amounts acquired from Oi. At TIM it didn't happen.
Source: Anatel
The same happened in M2M. Vivo and Claro registered growth bigger than the M2M acquired from Oi. TIM was the only operator that presented net additions lower than the M2M purchased from Oi.
Source: Anatel
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