Vivo (telecommunications)


Vivo, is a brand of Telefônica Brasil, a subsidiary of Telefónica and the largest telecommunications company in Brazil. It is headquartered in the Brooklin Novo neighborhood of São Paulo.

History

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 and O2.

Merged companies

The following operators merged to form Vivo:

Owned by Telefónica
Owned by Portugal Telecom
Acquired by the joint venture
New operations in the Northeast region
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 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 band 7 4G LTE in major cities. Initially, the network was based on analog AMPS and parts, using TDMA. These are all being converted to GSM since 2006, when, after years being the only CDMA network, Vivo announced a GSM network, and that it would operate in both CDMA and GSM. The CDMA network was gradually converted to CDMA2000 in the major cities. The CDMA network was discontinued in November 2012.

Vivo brands

Vivo owns the following brands: