The company was originally formed as part of
Telebrás, the state-owned telecom
monopoly at the time. In 1998, Telebrás was demerged and
privatized.
Telefónica bought Telesp, the São Paulo division, and rebranded it to Telefónica. On 15 April 2012, all Telefónica services were rebranded again to Vivo, using the same strategy of unifying all its services in a unique brand, like
Movistar (Hispanic America and Spain) and
O2 (rest of Europe).
Merged companies The following operators merged to form Vivo: Owned by Telefónica • Telefónica Celular (
Rio de Janeiro,
Espírito Santo,
Rio Grande do Sul) • Telebahia Celular (
Bahia) • Telergipe Celular (
Sergipe) •
Telesp Landline (
São Paulo)
Owned by Portugal Telecom • Telesp Celular (
São Paulo) • Global Telecom (
Paraná,
Santa Catarina) • Norte Brasil Telecom (a.k.a. NBT) (
Amazonas,
Roraima,
Pará,
Amapá,
Maranhão)
Acquired by the joint venture • TCO Celular (
Goiás, the
Federal District,
Acre,
Tocantins,
Mato Grosso,
Mato Grosso do Sul) •
Telemig Celular (
Minas Gerais)
New operations in the Northeast region • Vivo (
Ceará,
Alagoas,
Rio Grande do Norte,
Pernambuco,
Paraíba,
Piauí), since October 2008.
Vivo brand The Vivo brand was launched on 13 April 2003, as a
mobile phone service provider. It's the largest provider in Brazil with over 76 million users. It originated from the
merger of several Brazilian mobile phone operations under a
joint-venture owned equally by
Portugal Telecom (PT) and Spain's
Telefónica. Until 2006, the group was composed of six holding companies which, as announced in November 2005, merged into a single holding company, "Vivo Participações". The operation was concluded on 22 February 2006. In July 2010, Telefónica bought PT's shares. Today Vivo operates an
UMTS,
3G networks and bands 1, 7, 3, 28
4G LTE in most Brazilian cities. Initially, the network was based on analog
AMPS (
IS-95) and parts (resulting from acquisition of other companies), using
TDMA (
IS-136). These were all converted to
GSM beginning in 2006, when, after years being the only
CDMA network. For some years,
GSM and
CDMA networks coexisted. In the second half of the 2000s, the CDMA network was gradually converted to
CDMA2000 in the major cities. The CDMA network was discontinued in November 2012. In 2012, the fixed services in the state of
São Paulo were rebranded from Telefónica to Vivo, unifying the brands for fixed and mobile services since then.
Vivo brands Vivo owns the following brands: •
Vivo Móvel (mobile service) •
Vivo 4G (
4G LTE) •
Vivo 4G Plus (4G
LTE Advanced Pro) •
Vivo 5G (
5G) •
Vivo Fixo (landline service, formerly
Telefônica) •
Vivo Internet (
ADSL broadband, formerly
Speedy) •
Vivo Internet Plus (Cable broadband, formerly
Ajato and
Vivo Speedy, being discontinued) •
Vivo Fibra (
FTTH broadband, as of 4Q2020, +50% of broadband users) •
Vivo TV (initially
satellite television, DTH, formerly
Telefônica TV Digital) •
Vivo TV (
satellite TV) •
Vivo TV Plus (
cable television, formerly
TVA, being discontinued as of 4Q2020) •
Vivo TV Fibra (FTTH television service) == See also ==