Jul 22, 2025
The Last Call for Landline Telephony? Not Yet.
How many landlines are in service in 2025?
How many landlines are in service in 2025?
Brazil’s multi-band 5G spectrum auction concluded in November 2021, resulting in total commitments of $8.5 billion (BRL 47.2 billion) and bids from major players: Telefónica Brasil (Vivo), Claro Brasil, and TIM Brasil. It also garnered attention from established regional companies, such as Algar Telecom and Sercomtel, as well as several lesser-known participants.
How are Brazil's 5G licensees making progress three and a half years later? Here's what the data says.
In May, U.S. cable giants Charter Communications and Cox Communications entered into a definitive agreement to combine their businesses in a “transformative transaction” that will create an industry leader in the U.S. cable sector.
It’s been a couple of years since we reviewed the state of the 2G and 3G mobile markets to see how network closures were coming along.
There has been plenty of activity since then, and 2025 is shaping up to be a busy year for shutdowns.
French billionaire Xavier Niel rose to prominence in the telecom world for his ownership of domestic telco Iliad. He went on to capture the industry’s attention when Iliad sparked a price war in the mobile sector when the telco’s Free Mobile unit launched in January 2012. (Niel employed a similar price-war tactic when Iliad Italia launched in May 2018.)
But these companies only represent the tip of the iceberg.
Indeed, the size and scale of Niel’s empire are often overlooked due to convoluted shareholder structures, the use of myriad holding companies – including NJJ Capital, Atlas Investissement and Iliad itself – and the lack of a unified brand name across markets.
Today we piece it all together to appreciate the bigger picture.
At the end of 2024, the global mobile subscription total stood at 8.8 billion, according to figures from our GlobalComms Database. This is up from 8.7 billion a year earlier and 8.5 billion at end-2022.
Ten years ago, the total was closer to 7.0 billion; at the end of 2004, it was just 1.7 billion.
Back in early 2019, after months of speculation linking Telefonica to a sale of its Central American operations, the Spanish telecom giant agreed to offload all five of its units in the region.
By the end of 2019, the Madrid-based group had unveiled a five-point turnaround strategy to overhaul its business.
Fiber broadband is now by far the most common means of fixed broadband connectivity worldwide, although the picture varies from region to region.
Vietnamese military-run telecom operator Viettel reports impressive uptake figures since launching its 5G mobile network in mid-October 2024. Within two weeks, the firm attracted 3 million 5G users, reaching 4 million in late December.
While 5G has been available in many Asian markets for some time, users in Vietnam were forced to wait for their first taste of the new technology.
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