Telecom network operator TIM said its investment in LTE network in Brazil has fetched additional data revenue in 2015.

TIM made an investment of R$4,658 million or $1.2 billion, an increase of 18.6 percent, in telecom network infrastructure – mainly 3G and 4G networks alone. Capex to revenue ratio was 27 percent in 2017, said TIM last week.

Annual Capex of TIM in 4G network rose 133 percent. TIM investment in 3G grew 6 percent. Investment in 2G network by TIM increased 22 percent.

As a result of increase in Capex, data revenues of TIM rose around 40 percent, with positive results both in terms of data ARPU and data user base.

Last year, TIM focused on adding 16,000 km of optical fiber (+30 percent), along with other network projects roll out, such as sites densification, Wi-Fi and small cell expansion, backhaul development, cell-site fine tuning and others.

TIM added 103 new hotspots in Q4 2015. The total number of Wi-Fi hotspots in Brazil reached 1,900 (+39 percent) in 2015.

The mobile operator added 69 new cities to Mobile BroadBand Project (MBB)’ roll out last year. The MBB project reached 194 cities, covering approximately 70 percent of TIM’s entire data traffic.

TIM 4G — using the 1,800MHz band — reached 411 cities in 2015 representing 59 percent of urban population.  TIM 3G expanded its coverage to 503 new cities in 2015, reaching 1,839 cities or 82.0 percent of urban population. GSM coverage reached almost 95 percent of urban population.
TIM’s subscriber base fell 12.5 percent to 66.2 million in 2015. TIM has 37.5 million 3G subscribers (flat growth). 4G base of TIM reached 7.1 million (+40.8 percent) users in 2015.

“These investments allowed us to reach milestone of 411 cities covered with 4G, or 59 percent of the country’s urban population, achieving the leadership in 4G coverage in Brazil. We have added yet another 500 cities to our 3G coverage, and reached the mark of over 70,000 km of own optical fiber, which will continue to allow the fast growth of our high capacity data infrastructure,” said TIM CEO Rodrigo Abreu.

Baburajan K
[email protected]