América Móvil launches quad-play deals in Brazil

Mexican telecoms giant America Móvil (NYSE: AMX) has launched quadruple-play services in Latin America's largest telecoms market, Brazil, combining fixed telephony, broadband, HD pay TV and mobile telephony services from the group's three Brazilian-owned carriers NET, Claro and Embratel. The announcement was made this Tuesday in a press conference from pay TV company NET during ABTA 2013, the Brazilian pay TV association annual event, taking place this week in São Paulo. "This announcement effectively changes how NET looks and presents itself, upgrading from being a triple-play company to a quadruple-play one," NET CEO José Felix told journalists. With the "Combo Multi" package, the group is adding Claro's mobile services to the current bundled triple-play packages (pay TV, fixed telephony and broadband). Billing and call center services have also been integrated, revealed the executives, and customers will receive a single bill for usage. The quad-play packages allow free calls from Claro's mobile lines to NET's fixed lines and vice versa. Also, the quad-play plans come with two types of mobile telephony packages: Multi 100, with 100 minutes of calls to other operators and 2GB data traffic, and Multi 600, with 600 minutes of calls to other operators and 5GB of data usage. The plans are valid for both the 3G and 4G networks, in the 18 cities where the latter is available, and come with a set of unlimited SMS to any Brazilian operator, among other features. Claro Brasil's presidente Carlos Zenteno underlined that quad-play clients will also be able to use Claro's Wi-Fi network, which is currently comprised of 6,000 hotpots that have already been deployed in the main cities across Brazil. The announcement comes roughly a week after Paulo César Teixeira, general director of Telefónica's (NYSE: TEF) Brazilian subsidiary Telefônica/Vivo, revealed that the group was preparing to launch limited quadruple-play services in Brazil's São Paulo state, during a conference call to discuss Q2 results. BROADBAND UPGRADES Another new development is the upgrade of broadband speeds offered in NET's Virtua plans. The 10MB, 20MB and 100MB packages will be upgraded to 30MB, 60MB and 100MB, respectively. Although they are being announced now, the new speeds will be effective to customers from September, as the company "is going through all the details and wrapping up the technological aspects" of the upgrade, explained marketing director Márcio Carvalho. "In order to ensure the quality of the services, the implementation will be gradual and will take place only where infrastructure is already available or where there is demand for ultrabroadband," added Felix. The most popular 1MB plans will continue to be traded by the company, principally under the government's national broadband plan PNBL, but the company says it is in talks with state governments to increase speeds in those plans as well. NET plans to invest 3.5bn reais (US$1.5bn) this year in Brazil, up from 2.7bn reais invested last year. Over the last five years, its investment reportedly surpasses 10bn reais.