LatinNews Daily - 06 November 2020

* Brazil’s national telecommunications regulator (Anatel) has reported that, for the first time ever, the number of fixed mobile phone contracts (‘pós-pago’) exceeds that of prepaid phone plans (‘pré-pago’) in the country. In September this year, Anatel registered 113.6m users on prepaid plans and 114.7m mobile phone users on fixed monthly contracts. The number of prepaid plans has been falling since it peaked at 211.4m in June 2015, while fixed contracts – which numbered 71m then – have continued to grow. Anatel says three reasons help explain this: the economic crisis in 2015-16, which led low-income households to reduce their usage of prepaid phone cards; changes to telecoms regulations which made communications between different operators free (thus reducing the number of users with multiple prepaid phone cards); and increased mobile internet usage, as fixed contracts offer more capacity and more advantageous terms than prepaid plans. Overall, Anatel registered 228.3m mobile phone numbers across Brazil as of September (equivalent to a phone coverage density of 94.8 mobile phones per every 100 inhabitants); of these, 200.6m benefit from internet access via mobile broadband.

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