Vivo (Bovespa: VIVO3 / VIVO4; NYSE: VIV) is the largest mobile phone service provider in Brazil and in South America with over 28 million users. It originated from the merger of several Brazilian mobile phone operations under a joint-venture owned equally by Portuguese Portugal Telecom and Spanish Telefónica. Most of its network is IS-95/cdmaOne based, although there are parts of it which are still analog AMPS and parts (resulting from acquisition of other companies) which are TDMA (IS-136) based. The network is being gradually converted to CDMA2000. In 2006, after years being the only CDMA network, Vivo announced a GSM network, and that it would operate in both CDMA and GSM[1]. The Vivo brand was launched on April 13th 2003. Until 2006, the group was composed of six holding companies which, as announced in November 2005, merged into a single holding company, Vivo Participações S.A.. The operation was concluded on February 22nd 2006.
Merged companies
The following operators merged to form Vivo: Portugal Telecom-owned
- Telesp Celular (São Paulo)
- Global Telecom (Paraná, Santa Catarina)
Telefónica-owned
- Telefónica Celular (Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Rio Grande do Sul)
- Telebahia Celular (Bahia)
- Telergipe Celular (Sergipe)
Acquired by the joint venture
- NBT (Amazonas, Roraima, Pará, Amapá, Maranhão)
- TCO Celular (Goiás, the Brazilian Federal District, Acre, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul)
References
- ^ O que muda com a ida da Vivo para o GSM (Portuguese). Retrieved on 2007-05-18.
External links
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Brazilian mobile phone companies | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Brasil Telecom | Claro | Oi | Telemig Celular | TIM | Vivo | |||
 Ibovespa companies of Brazil |
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