Telefonica pounced last year to acquire Brazil’s pay TV operator TVA and is now launching it more aggressively into the pay market, spending some $75 million according to local reports, extending fiber into other towns up to the quality of its existing fiber plant in downtown Sao Paulo.
TVA has been owned by Telefonica since last year. It was the first pay TV company in Brazil in the 1990’s using cable for delivery but now reports suggest it will shift its technology to IPTV over cable, or at least certainly offer digital cable. TVA has also announced plans to produce content for Mobile TV and will rush to become fully digital across the whole country.
Last year the country changed legislation to allow foreign companies like Telefonica to directly own content creation and still get the same tax benefits as local companies, as well as paid TV channels. This was always designed to attract investment from overseas cellular companies, such as Telefonica.
TVA has also said it will introduce “IPTV 3D” in 2009, a 3D television project which has a pilot already in development in Spain. TVA has about 7% of the Brazilian pay TV market, lagging substantially behind cable operator Net Servicos and DTH supplier SkyDirecTV.
Telefonica said this quarter that it has 346,894 pay TV customers in Brazil and had net adds of 64,558 in the second quarter.