Telecommunications company Telefonica, whose operations in Colombia and the rest of the Latin American countries -with the exception of Brazil- are branded as ‘Movistar’, has officially announced this last Tuesday, May 25th, that it has acquired DirecTV’s fixed internet business (AT&T), which the company had offered since 2014 in Colombia, including the network and spectrum.
The agreement between Movistar and DirecTV establishes that the DTH’s clients will keep their TV plan with DirecTV, while Movistar takes the internet access service over. From Movistar they have also reported that the operation still needs to be approved by the competent regulators and that, once it enters into force, DirecTV Colombia’s clients will not experience changes in the company’s offers that they have hired, nor with their rates, billing processes and customer service lines.
According to Fabian Hernandez, President & CEO at Movistar Colombia, the agreement ‘ratifies the company’s commitment with the country, and will allow us, on the one hand, to continue consolidating our presence in the national market with the acquisition of DirecTV’s internet infrastructure. and, on the other hand, to strengthen our operation by having additional spectrum to support the growth of mobile data traffic that we have been noting in recent months, especially after the start of the pandemic’.
Mariano Díaz de Vivar, Country Managing Director at DirecTV Colombia, has also expressed himself on the new partnership with Movistar in the country, and said that ‘the digital transformation is revolutionizing telecommunications and audiovisual services, to the point that customers are changing their consumption habits and the way in which they relate to their environment’. The executive has also reported that ‘by concentrating on content generation and distribution, we will be able to focus on delivering the best content options to the market with services that are simple to use when and how they want, giving an answer to consumer needs’.
According to the information officially reported by the company, DirecTV now features about 200 thousand internet clients in Colombia, of which 60% bundle their offer with a pay TV plan. In addition, although DirecTV’s internet offering in Colombia is available in several cities in the country, in 2020 the company launched the first internet plans over 5G in Bogota. On the other hand, Movistar Colombia forecasts that, during 2020, the use of its fixed network has increased by 98%. Movistar Colombia ended Q1 2021 with a 19.9 million customer base throughout the country, including 16.7 million mobile lines; 1.2 million broadband and 527 thousand pay TV customers; and 1.4 million of fixed lines in service.