NET (telecommunications)

NET was a Brazilian telecommunications company that offered services such as cable television, broadband internet and telephony. The company's NET TV service (cable TV) had around 5.4 million subscribers as of Q2 2012.[1] NET also operated the broadband Internet service NET Vírtua, with over 9 million subscribers as of Q2 2019[2] and telephone over cable (under the NET Fone via Embratel name) with more than 2.5 million subscribers. It is owned by Mexican telecom giant América Móvil. On 11 July 2019, the NET brand was absorbed into the Claro brand, already used by América Móvil for its mobile business in Latin America.

History

NET was launched on 12 December 1991 by Brazil's Roberto Marinho family's as part of their Rede Globo empire. In March 2005, Embratel, a subsidiary of Mexico's Telmex, took a controlling stake in NET, paying 570 million reais.

The company announced in late 2006 that it would buy Vivax, then the nation's second-largest cable company. The transaction was approved in May 2007 and completed in June 2007. Rollout of the Net brand in Vivax areas was completed in December 2007.[citation needed]

On 10 August 2010, NET became the first cable operator in Brazil to offer all the Discovery Latin America channels: Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Kids, People+Arts, Discovery Travel & Living, Discovery Home & Health, Discovery Science, Discovery Civilization, Discovery Turbo, HD Theater and TLC.