Movistar (Chile)

Movistar (legally, Telefónica Chile, S.A. and Telefónica Móviles Chile, S.A.) is a Chilean telecommunications company, which finds its origins in the extinct Chilean Telephone Company. The origin of this company dates back to the XIX century in the city of Valparaíso, generally being a multinational and/or associated company to foreign capital. The exception is the period between 1971, the year in which the company was intervened for its nationalization, and 1987, when it was privatized.

Since 1930, it was known as the Chilean Telephone Company (CTC); At that time, the property was controlled by the American multinational International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT). In its privatization, it passed into the hands of the Bond Group, of Australian origin, who later in the mid-1990s, the company became the property of its current owners, Telefónica S.A.

In 1999, it clashed with Telefónica del Sur over the change of trade name from CTC to, simply, Telefónica; Telsur, then owned by Grupo Luksic, argued that the word "telefónica" is a generic name, and the name change should be reversed, thus calling itself Telefónica CTC Chile. In February 2006, it proposed to its shareholders to change its name to simply Telefónica Chile; the operation was approved by the shareholders' meeting on April 20 of that year.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, it spun off its mobile division from its parent company, called Telefónica Móvil, to Telefónica Móviles, with the aim of merging it with the recently acquired Bellsouth Chile (now AT&T). This operation gave rise to the then only mobile Movistar Chile. It is currently the second mobile telephone operator with the most clients in Chile, totaling just under 7.5 million subscribers at the end of 2016, second only to Entel.

History

Telephone service began in Chile in 1880 with the creation of the “Compañía Chilena de Telefonos de Edison” in the city of Valparaíso. His importance grew to such an extent that President José Manuel Balmaceda used as a strategy during the Civil War of 1891, the cut off of the telephone service that some of his opponents used to communicate. Between 1883 and 1884 it was succeeded by The West Coast Telephone Company, and in 1889 it was succeeded by the Chile Telephone Company.

In 1927 International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) acquired the Chile Telephone Company, which had 26,205 telephones in operation at the time. In 1931, the Chilean Telephone Company was founded, created as a public limited company called Compañía de Telefonos de Chile S.A. In 1971, the Chilean government intervened to control the management of the Company and in 1974, the Chilean government's Corporation for the Promotion of Production (CORFO) acquired 80% of the total shares issued by the then Chilean Telephone Company. (CTC), held by ITT.

Imagotype employed by the Chilean Telephone Company between 1989 and 1999.

From its beginnings, the Chilean Telephone Company was a private company (it was intervened by the government in 1971). Three years later, the Series "A" owned by ITT, were acquired by the state through the Production Development Corporation (CORFO). On November 30, 1977, CTC assumed control of the Arica Municipal Telephone Company after its reorganization and intervention since March 1974 by the municipality.

Detail of the sign and cenepha used in the public telephones that were owned by the Chilean Telephone Company (CTC) between the years 1989 and 1999.

The company's re-privatization process began in August 1987, the year in which the Australian company Bond Corporation acquired 30% of the shares in a public offering. Later, through a capital contribution and some additional purchases, Bond Corporation Chile S.A. was left with approximately 50% of the issued and outstanding capital of the company. In April 1990, Telefónica de España became the majority shareholder and that same year the CTC became the first Chilean company to list American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the New York Stock Exchange.^{[quote required]} In 1991 the company changed its name to Compañía de Telecomunicaciones de Chile, keeping its initials CTC.

One of its greatest milestones is found in the complete digitalization of the fixed telephone network throughout all of Chile in 1993.

In 1996, it obtained one of the first mobile telephony operation licenses in Chile in a strategic association with VTR, forming Startel Celular. In 1999 it was renamed Amistar and the following year as Telefónica Móvil.

In November 2006, Telefónica was fined US$1 million when the court considered that the prohibition on the use of VoIP on its network violated free competition.

In the first quarter of 2009, it had a profit of almost US$20 million in the first quarter, and plans to invest a figure similar to the US$238 million it invested in 2008.

Since October 2009 in Chile, Telefónica, formerly called CTC, has been renamed Movistar. The companies that make up the Telefónica group in Chile offer mobile, landline, broadband and television services, from now on sharing a single commercial brand for all its segments, products and services, but their corporate names continue to be different; the change of commercial brand does not imply an institutional merger.

In total, the group has close to 10 million customer accesses, an annual billing of around US$ 2,000 million and 6,000 direct employees.^{[citation required]}

Mobile Phone

Telefónica Móvil was born in Chile in the year 2000, however as a company it is a few years older. Initially as Startel in a strategic association with VTR, the mobile subsidiary of the Chilean Telephone Company (known by its acronym CTC) began operations in 1996 distributing the first mobile phones for any user (previously it was only distributed to companies under the auspices of other CTC subsidiaries, all of which were later transferred to this subsidiary). It was during this time that the commercial character Faúndez became known, a person dedicated to repairing various types of electrical problems, plumbers or any other similar species (the typical "maestro chasquilla& #34; Chilean) but that he was the owner of a cell phone; which hinted that anyone could have a mobile device. That period was the best for the company because, unlike its rivals at the time (Entel PCS, Chilesat PCS and Bellsouth), it expanded and was a pioneer in the prepaid segment, where despite the high rates and average of income at the time, made mobile telephony accessible to a significant part of the country's population that did not meet the commercial requirements or could not afford the prices of the postpaid contracts of the time.

In 1999 it was renamed Amistar,^{[citation required]} a name that until then and even until 2001 was also occupied by the &# 34;prepaid cards" of mobiles. This name, however, would not last long as the following year and with the purchase of CTC by Telefónica España, the subsidiary was renamed Telefónica Móvil.^{[citation required]}

It remained that way until 2005 when Telefónica CTC Chile (the heir to CTC) decided to sell its subsidiary to the company Telefónica Móviles Chile S.A., which would make the merger between it and Bellsouth Chile giving rise to Movistar Chile.

Bellsouth

On par with Startel, the US company Bellsouth (first called "CIDCOM celular" obtaining permission and use of the electromagnetic spectrum in the 800 MHz band only in the region Metropolitana and Valparaíso carrying out roaming in the other cities through Telecom celular that in those years had been awarded the same frequency in the rest of the country). arrives in Chile as a telephone company (fixed network, mobile telephone and long distance carrier) at the end of the '90s. Its mobile subsidiary focused on sales to companies and executives and ranked third among mobile companies.

However, since 2000 its policies focused on reaching the lowest strata, marketing cell phones at low cost. During the same time, it discontinued its subsidiary "fixed network" controlling only mobile telephony and the "carrier 181".^{[citation required]} In 2004 the company Bellsouth Chile S.A. renamed as Telefónica Móviles Chile S.A. for purposes of the merger.

The unification of the Movistar brand

In 2004, Telefónica acquired all of BellSouth's cellular assets in Latin America.^{[citation needed]} Given the multiplicity of commercial brands that came to bear as a result of this acquisition, the legal obligation to stop using the Bellsouth brand and the presence of several Telefónica Móviles operators in the same country (such as Chile, where they owned Telefónica Móvil), Telefónica decided to unify their operations under the Movistar, which he already had in Spain and in other countries such as Mexico. This change became effective on April 6, 2005.^{[citation needed]}

Corporate Building

Telefónica Chile.

The Telefónica Tower view from Plaza Baquedano.

The representative corporate building of Telefónica Chile, called Telefónica Tower (previously, CTC Building), has a height of 132 meters comprised of 34 floors, and is currently the fourth tallest building in the country. Located to one side of Plaza Baquedano, the construction is accompanied by two lower elevations: one of nine floors on Avenida Providencia and another of five on Avenida Bustamante. It was inaugurated in 1996.

According to Telefónica, the structure has sufficient capacity to resist the energy produced by the 15 largest earthquakes that have occurred in the world, verifying this on February 27, 2010 during the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that affected Chile. ranked as the fifth largest on record, after which the building only presented "minor damage". In addition, the shape obtained from the union of the elevations makes the building take the shape of a cell phone of the time.

In August 2019 it was announced that Movistar put it up for sale.

Movistar Chile Telefonica Foundation

The Fundación Telefónica Movistar Chile was created in 1998 by agreement of the Telefónica General Shareholders' Meeting, with the aim of articulating social and cultural action in the countries where the companies are present of the Telefonica Group. The social commitment of Fundación Telefónica Movistar Chile is oriented through actions and projects in which information technologies are involved.

Terra Networks Chile

Terra Networks Chile generally known as Terra, was one of the most visited portals in the country, a subsidiary of Telefónica Chile since 2005. Terra Networks was a multinational Internet company, a subsidiary of the Telefónica group. Terra operated as a portal and Internet access provider in the United States, Spain, and 16 Latin American countries. Terra traded its shares on Nasdaq under the symbol TRLY and on the Spanish stock market under the symbol TRR until 2005, when Terra decided to merge with Movistar. Starting in 2005, Terra's subsidiaries were controlled by the local affiliates of the Telefónica Group. After the irruption of social networks, Terra sought to update its content by offering concerts, soccer matches, and movie and music rental services, even so it did not have the expected success. Terra Networks Chile stopped operating on July 1, 2017, after 17 years of existence in the country.

News

In December 2007, Movistar launched its third generation services, implementing 3.5G HSDPA technology, a mobile broadband network that at that time offered users a better browsing speed of up to 700 Kbps (speed that increased with the passing of the years).

In 2010, Movistar launched HSPA+ technology offering speeds of up to 10 Mbps with the provider Nokia Siemens Networks.

In 2012, Movistar Chile together with Entel Chile and Claro Chile won a public tender from Subtel which granted authorization to implement 4G LTE technology under the 2600 MHz (or 2.6 Ghz) band.

Currently Movistar manages to offer good coverage and quality of service of its LTE network, offering an average speed of 7 Mbps but in practice it manages to reach speeds of up to 100 Mbps effective, it all depends on the sector, geography and density population where the user is located.

In the report for the month of June 2015 of the Open-Signal application, a mobile application that collects mobile browsing data from users worldwide, among other functionalities, positions Chile as the second place with the best speed of mobile internet under the LTE network, being surpassed by Singapore with 24 Mbps average, followed by Chile with 20 Mbps average, this obtained from data collected from clients mostly of the Movistar Chile company, which is the one that offers the best and best coverage. LTE network service.

Since October 2009, the Telefónica Group in Chile unifies its commercial brands, becoming Movistar. The companies that make up the Telefónica group in Chile offer mobile, landline, broadband and TV services sharing a single commercial brand for all their segments, products and services, but their corporate names remain different, the change of commercial brand does not imply an institutional merger.

At present, Movistar offers satellite television and IPTV services, fixed and wireless telephony, fixed, mobile and satellite internet, international long distance and cellular telephony, to a total of 10 million customers in a large part of the country, being the most important company in telephone and Internet services in Chile. Its most important competitors are Entel Chile, VTR, DirecTV Chile, Claro Chile, GTD Manquehue and Telefónica del Sur. Currently, Movistar has coverage from Arica to Punta Arenas, between ADSL technology (the most extensive) and VDSL under twisted copper pair cabling and in some sectors FTTH, however; no plans to extend its fiber optic runs have been announced.

181 Telefónica Móviles Chile S.A.

With the purchase of Bellsouth, Telefónica Móviles Chile was also left with the national and world Long Distance service of the original Chilean subsidiary of the US company. Since then it has been commercially called 181 Movistar. However, in 2010 and with the unification of the Movistar brand, Telefónica Chile, controller of Movistar Larga Distancia, acquired 100% of the Long Distance subsidiary of Telefónica Móviles Chile. For administrative purposes, Movistar Larga Distancia is the legal continuation of the 181 services.

Television

Movistar TV is a digital satellite television service belonging to Movistar Chile, officially launched in mid-June 2006 in Chile.

As of August 2, 2011, it already had more than 373,000 clients throughout Chile. During mid-June 2007, the company launched the IPTV version of Movistar TV, called Movistar IPTV. This service is currently offered only for the eastern sector of Santiago de Chile as a complement to Movistar TV (Satellite) also offering the VOD (Video On Demand) service, available with a Digital Video Recorder (DVR). Since September 2007, the DVR service has been offered additionally to current clients, allowing interactivity in their programming. Since August 2015, Movistar has 634,000 customers

The system has PPV events in Chile, and the way to pay is through thematic plans, so the user can pay only for the channels they want to see. The service also has audio channels.

Conflict between clients and Macrovision

Many users in July 2006 demanded the removal of the TiVo Corporation (Xperi) anti-copy system, which was built into the software of all set-top boxes and which prohibited subscribers from recording TV shows. The users expressed themselves in different media, but even more so on the Movistar suggestions page, where the claims were made public. At the end of August, a software update was performed remotely on all decoders, thus removing the system.

Related companies

Telefónica Chile is structured by:

Logo by Movistar TV Chile.

• Movistar Chile: Movistar TV, fixed telephony and ADSL.
• Movistar Mobile: Mobile phone 3G/4G and Mobile Broadband.
• Movistar Arena: Multi-purpose ticket bearing the commercial name, but the owner is Peter Hiller and the operator is SMG World.
• Movistar Companies: Business solutions for large companies and corporations.
• Telefónica Global Solutions: Major Services.
• T-Gestiona: Infrastructure and personal solutions.
• Pleyade Chile: Insurance broker.
• Movistar GameClub: Recinto dedicated to video games.