Are Telefónica, Viettel losing steam in Peru?

Telefónica’s Movistar and Viettel’s Bitel, two of Peru’s four national mobile carriers, saw their market shares decline in the 12 months to the end of March, according to data from sector regulator Osiptel.

Despite the net addition of around 360,000 lines in the period, market leader Movistar’s market share dropped to 31.1% at end-March from 31.4% at the same date of 2021. Bitel, meanwhile, reported shedding 19,000 accesses, bringing its market share down to 17.5% from 18.2% on March 31, 2021.

América Móvil’s Claro and Chile’s Entel grew their market shares to 29.1% and 22.0% from 28.2% and 21.7%, respectively, in the same period. As a result, América Móvil narrowed the gap to Telefónica to just 2 percentage points or roughly 1mn lines.

The Osiptel figures show that Telefónica took a hit particularly in the postpaid segment, where it lost over 2mn accesses in the period, whereas all other three national telcos either saw increases in this segment or, in Bitel’s case, the figures remained flat.

Finally, mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) Flash and Guinea Mobile added 150,417 and 25,805 lines in the period, reaching market shares of 0.4% and 0.1%, respectively, according to the watchdog.

Peru ended March with a total 41.7mn mobile lines in service, up 1.8mn in the previous 12 months. This was equivalent to 124% penetration, according to the regulator. Of the total number of mobile lines with internet access, around 82%, or 27.1mn, used 4G LTE technology.

Graph source: Osiptel

PAY-TV

The country ended March with 1.98mn pay-TV subscriptions, equivalent to 20% penetration of households. Of the total, 72% were cable and 28% were satellite services. 

The regulator does not provide detailed figures on the type of cable TV connectivity and it is therefore not possible to specify how many accesses were via fiber or copper cable, for example. 

In fixed broadband, fiber accounted for 23.6% of all connections at end-March, while 63.9% were via cable modem.

Telefónica still comfortably leads the Peruvian pay-TV segment, accounting for over 59% of total accesses, compared with 19.6% for DirecTV and 10.2% for Claro. 

However, Telefónica's market share also declined in this segment, dipping from 62% at end-March 2021 to the same date in 2022.

According to Osiptel, fixed internet is the fastest-growing telecom service in Peru, having expanded by 7.69% in accesses over the year to March 31. Mobile service subscriptions grew by 3.4% and pay-TV by 0.61% in the same period, while fixed telephony subscriptions dropped 7.75%.