THE Anatel released the Personal Mobile Service numbers for June 2019: the number of lines in the prepaid decreased by 18 million in the last year; meanwhile, the postpaid registered an increase of more than 11 million lines in the same period. Overall, the four major operators – Vivo, Claro, TIM and Oi – lost lines in the last 12 months, while Nextel and Datora grew.
In the past 12 months, Brazil lost 6.69 million lines, equivalent to 2.84%. Between May and June alone there was a reduction of 250 thousand chips. In total, Anatel has 228.39 million mobile lines in operation.
Of the four largest companies, Vivo was the only operator that registered an increase in the number of mobile lines between May and June 2019, but lost accesses in the annual comparison. See the complete data:
| Operator | Active lines (Jun / 2019) | Market share | Last month | Last 12 months |
| 73.74 million | 32.39% | +53,34k | – 1.52 million | |
| sure | 56.43 million | 24.71% | – 49.37 thousand | – 2.58 million |
| TIM | 54.97 million | 24.08% | – 336.64 thousand | – 1.58 million |
| Hi | 37.51 million | 16.43% | – 50.31 thousand | – 3.47 million |
| Nextel | 3.49 million | 1.53% | + 12.31 thousand | + 415.49 thousand |
| Datora | 450.12 thousand | 0.20% | + 11.38 thousand | + 527,34k |
Postpaid grows and prepaid decreases
To increase sales, operators have been encouraging the conversion of the prepaid to postpaid base, which has more expensive plans and requires a monthly commitment. The work was successful: the prepaid lost 18.09 million lines in the last 12 months, a decrease of 12.74%.
Meanwhile, the postpaid already represents 45.6% of all mobile accesses, with an increase of 11.4 million lines in the last 12 months. There are 104.5 million accesses in total.
It is important to remember that control plans are considered as postpaid by operators: although they are more limited than pure postpaid, they also have a monthly commitment and higher amounts than prepaid.
4G grows almost 20% in the last year
Another data released by Anatel is the number of devices with their respective technology. There are 142.11 million lines that had access to 4G, 19.97% higher than in the same period last year.
The devices M2M, used for connected devices such as vehicle trackers and card machines, also increased significantly: in the last 12 months alone, 5.29 million units were added, totaling 22.21 million.
With information: Anatel.