Federica Laricchia
Research expert covering the global consumer technology industry
Get in touch with us nowInternet services: an ongoing trend
Brazilians are still craving to go and to stay online. In 2021, there were approximately 19.4 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in the Portuguese-speaking country – an increase of almost 50 percent compared to the roughly 13 fixed connections per 100 people recorded five years before. Likewise, mobile internet is more relevant than ever, since 99 percent of internet users access the web with their phones. In 2022, Telefónica was the mobile telephony market leader, occupying over 38 percent of the market and followed by TIM.The twilight of fixed telephony?
The fixed telephony industry saw a slow but steady decline throughout the 2010s. As of 2021, there were around 13.5 million fixed-telephone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, the smallest number since 2000. Similarly, the gross revenue generated by fixed telephony services amounted to around 17 billion Brazilians reals in 2021 (over three billion U.S. dollars) – the lowest result in the 21st century. This downturn may reflect the change of the times, as mobile telephony and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) grow in use and quality. However, political choices, too, play a role in this market. In a country where just under 25 percent of the population still had no access to the internet in 2022, time will tell if it was too soon to start discarding fixed telephony altogether.
