Telefonica Brasil S.a.
One of Brazil's largest telecom companies, Telefônica Brasil runs the country's familiar Vivo brand, offering mobile plans, fiber broadband, pay-TV, and digital services like Vivo Pay to households and businesses. It grew out of the 1998 privatization of Brazil's state telecom monopoly, when Spain's Telefónica took over São Paulo's Telesp. The Vivo name was born in 2003 as a joint venture between Telefónica and Portugal Telecom, who merged their Brazilian mobile networks; Telefónica later bought out its partner, and in 2012 folded all its fixed, mobile, broadband, and TV services under the single Vivo brand.