Claro led Christmas which had the smallest net adds since 2002
Brazil ended 2012 counting 261.8 million cellulars and density of 132.7 cell./100 inhab.
In December, net adds registered of 1.7 million cellulars were the lowest for this month since 2002.
The drop occurred in prepaid, with postpaid presenting growth in comparison with December/11.
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Note: When this commentary was published Anatel had reported this information until Oct/12 only.
December's results represented the continuity of the trends shown since May by cellular in Brazil, when the first signs of drop in net adds popped out in 2012. Since then, all the subsequent months presented net adds inferior to 2 million mobile subscriptions.
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The drop in net adds inside prepaid segment happened most likely due to market maturity which reached density superior to 130 cell./100 inhab. In this scenario, operators intensify the cleaning in their bases, establishing more restrict rules to shut off inactive subscribers.
Vivo, for example, reduced the time to turn off prepaid subscriptions to 60 days and reduced its CDMA base from 1 million clients in Jun/12 to 125 thousand in Dec/12. The carrier showed negative net adds in the last three months of the year, TIM in Oct/12 and Nov/12 and Oi in Dec/12.
Furthermore, the interest in avoiding the payment to Fistel (over inactive accesses) may have contributed to the promotion of cleaning. The fee of functioning inspection (Fistel) of R$13,42 is paid over the cellular active in the base in the end of the year.
Apparently, Claro doesn't need to make adjustments similar to the ones performed by the other carriers in 2012, because the company has already gone through this process in 2011.
This is one of the reasons why Claro was the cellular leader in Christmas' month, what didn't happen since 2006.
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