Spotlight: The best-performing ‘competitive’ Brazilian telcos

The so-called competitive operators, which include regional carriers and internet service providers (ISPs), among others, have been the trailblazers of fixed broadband in Brazil, accounting together for over 46% of all accesses in the country by October, according to regulator Anatel's data.

The rest is divided between the "non-competitive" telcos and market leaders Claro, Telefônica Brasil and Oi. TIM is considered “competitive” as it has less than 5% of the fixed broadband market.

Currently, there are more than 14,000 registered ISPs in Brazil. Yet only half of those are expected to be really operational. It is still a lot – but it is shrinking.

“The consolidation process is ongoing and should continue into 2022,” Eduardo Tude, head of consultancy Teleco, told BNamericas.

An analysis carried out by Teleco, taking into account different operational metrics such as revenue, growth, profitability and accesses, evaluated the best-performing competitive operators and ISPs in Brazil in this scenario of thousands of players and active consolidation.

The analysis places Brisanet, Unifique, Algar and Alloha Fibra, among others, as leaders in the field. Following a series of acquisitions, Alloha Fibra includes the brands Sumicity, Mob, Vip Telecom, Wirelink, Univox, Click Telecom and Ligue Telecom.

Algar led in fixed broadband net revenues, with 1.09bn reais (US$193mn) in the first nine months of this year, followed by Brisanet (524mn reais) and TIM (425mn reais).

Brisanet, in turn, led among the competitors in total fixed broadband accesses, with 791,000 at the end of September, followed by Alloha, with 742,000 and Algar (737,000).

In the third quarter, however, Alloha led in net additions, with a total of 172,000 new accesses through its ISPs, while Brisanet reported 54,000 new clients.

In October, Alexandre Mosche and Felipe Matsunaga, CEO and CFO of Alloha, told BNamericas the company expected to end the year with more than 1mn subscribers considering all the group's companies.

Broken down by region, Unifique leads among competitive carriers in Brazil's south, Algar in the southeast, Brisanet in the northeast, Você Telecom in the north and TIM in the center-west.

Unifique is now targeting large operators in the south region.

“Claro better watch. We'll become the leading player in Santa Catarina now in the first half of 2022. And we're going to be the biggest player in Rio Grande do Sul too. And then we're going to be the biggest in Paraná,” Unifique's markets director, Jair Francisco, told BNamericas in this interview.

Finally, in profitability, Unifique led in Ebitda margin year-to-September, at 53%. Vero Telecom (42.5%) comes next, according to Teleco.