Brazil Cell Phone Customers Reach 65.6 Million, +41.4% On Year"

SAO PAULO -(Dow Jones)- Brazil had 65.6 million mobile customers at the end of 2004, up 41.4% from 46.4 million at the end of 2003, Brazil's telecoms regulator, Anatel, said Monday.

Anatel said the operators added 4.4 million customers in December alone, in the now traditional boom in cell phone sales in the run-up to Christmas. Total net additions in the third quarter of 2004 were 7.4 million.

Mobile phone penetration reached 36.6% at the end of 2004, meaning more than one third of Brazil's 180 million population now own one, up from 26.2% at the end of 2003.

Prepaid plans accounted for 80.5% of total customers at the end of the year, while contract customers accounted for the remaining 19.5%.

Operators using the GSM technology standard more than doubled their customers in 2004, reaching 34.2% market share, up from 14.8% at the end of 2003. They ended December with 22.4 million customers, up 225% from 6.9 million at the end of last year.

Brazil's GSM operators launched in 2001 and include Claro, the local unit of Mexico's America Movil SA (AMX), and Telecom Italia Mobile SpA (TIM.IT).

Much of those GSM gains came at the expense of the outdated TDMA technology, which ended the year with 23.3 million customers or 35.5% market share at the end of December, down from 24.9 million customers or 53.7% market share at the beginning of the year.

CDMA technology, the main rival to GSM, saw its market share fall slightly to 29.7% at the end of December, down from 30.2% at the beginning of the year, though total customers reached 19.5 million, up 39.3% from 14 million at the end of 2003.

The only CDMA operator in Brazil is Vivo, a joint venture of Spain's Telefonica Moviles SA (TEM) and Portugal Telecom (PT).

-By Matthew Cowley, Dow Jones Newswires; 5511 3145 1479; matthew.cowleydowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires"

Posted to the site on 17th January 2005