Vivo (telecommunications company)
Vivo (Portuguese for 'Live', as in Live Broadcasting, or 'Alive'), known as Vivo Brazil, 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. 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). 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. 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.
