 | |
 Former Vivo headquarters inSão Paulo | |
| Company type | Brand ofTelefônica Brasil |
|---|---|
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 1993; 33 years ago (1993) (as Telesp Celular) April 13, 2003; 22 years ago (2003-04-13) (as Vivo) |
| Headquarters | São Paulo, Brazil |
Area served | 5,046municipalities[1]
|
Key people |
|
| Products | Fixed,mobile,Internet,television |
| Revenue |  R$64.61 billion (2021)[2] |
| R$6.96 billion (2021)[2] | |
| R$6.22 billion (2021)[2] | |
| Owner | Telefônica Brasil (subsidiary ofTelefónica) |
Number of employees |  133,473 (2021)[1]
|
| Website | vivo |
Vivo (Portuguese andSpanish for 'Live', as in Live Broadcasting, or 'Alive'), known as Vivo Brazil, is a brand ofTelefônica Brasil, a subsidiary ofTelefónica and the largesttelecommunications company in Brazil. It is headquartered in theBrooklin Novo neighborhood ofSão Paulo.
The company was originally formed as part ofTelebrás, the state-owned telecommonopoly at the time. In 1998, Telebrás was demerged andprivatized.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, likeMovistar (Hispanic America and Spain) andO2 (rest of Europe).
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 amobile phone service provider. It's the largest provider in Brazil with over 76 million users.[3] It originated from themerger of several Brazilian mobile phone operations under ajoint-venture owned equally byPortugal Telecom (PT) and Spain'sTelefónica. 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.[4][5]
Today Vivo operates anUMTS,3G networks and bands 1, 7, 3, 284GLTE in most Brazilian cities. Initially, the network was based on analogAMPS (IS-95) and parts (resulting from acquisition of other companies), usingTDMA (IS-136). These were all converted toGSM beginning in 2006, when, after years being the onlyCDMA network. For some years,GSM andCDMA networks coexisted.[6] In the second half of the 2000s, the CDMA network was gradually converted toCDMA2000 in the major cities. The CDMA network was discontinued in November 2012.[7]
In 2012, the fixed services in the state ofSão Paulo were rebranded from Telefónica to Vivo, unifying the brands for fixed and mobile services since then.[8]
Vivo owns the following brands:
