Brazil Post and Poste Italiane to launch joint mobile phone business

Brazil Post has signed an agreement with Poste Italiane to work together to launch a mobile phone service in Brazil. The agreement came following a bilateral meeting in Brasilia attended by Brazil Post president Wagner Pinheiro de Oliveira and the chief executive of Poste Italiane’s mobile phone division, Poste Mobile.

The two companies plan to establish a joint venture that will introduce a mobile phone service to Brazil using a virtual network.

As a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), the joint venture will not own the wireless communications network through which it will provide mobile phone services to customers, but will buy bulk access to existing network infrastructure at wholesale rates, before selling on phone services to customers at retail rates.

The postal operators are now in the process of talking to wireless telecommunications operators in Brazil, and plans to select a network partner in April. The venture will also have to secure an operating licence.

Brazil Post is expecting to start selling SIM cards and phone credits in its post offices from October 2015, and is planning a second phase of the project, selling phone handsets, from the first half of 2015.

Hopes are for Brazil Post to eventually become one of the largest distributors of mobile phone products in Brazil, with forecasts that the service could be provided to 8m people within five years thanks to the post office network’s reach into both urban and rural areas.

Poste Mobile

Brazil Post explained that the venture would follow the model of Poste Italiane’s Poste Mobile business in Italy, which was launched in 2007 as an MVNO. It now has 3m customers.

The company said that as well as established expertise, Poste Mobile has proven the reliability and capacity of a service based on a virtual network.

Pinheiro said the agreement with Poste Italiane was the result of a “thorough analysis” of the business.

“Our goal was to deliver to postal customers, through our extensive branch network, a range of comprehensive and affordable mobile communication services, along with value-added solutions that are simple and easy to use,” said the Brazil Post president.

“The choice of Poste Italiane as a partner of this project is a natural consequence of the experience of the Italian postal operator’s MVNO in its subsidiary Poste Mobile, which is widely considered a best practice in this field.”

Brazil Post, which is 100% state-owned, was only granted the powers to set up this kind of joint venture with a foreign company in postal reforms of 2011. Pinheiro said the partnership with Poste Italiane was “perfectly in line” with those reforms intended to modernise his company.

Massimo Sarmi, the Poste Italiane chief executive, said the work with Brazil Post was effectively part of his company’s role as a technology consultant for the global industry, in this case sharing expertise in digital communications.

“The joint venture with Brazil Post shows the efficiency of the Poste Mobile business model,” Sarmi said.

“It represents a success story that is easily scalable thanks to the simplicity and effectiveness of operational solutions and high level of innovation.”