Vivo’s pre-paid service attracts 300,000 GSM users in three months

Brazilian mobile operator Vivo Participações says it has signed up 300,000 customers to its new pre-paid GSM service in the first three months of commercial operations. Nine out of ten people taking the service are new customers, the cellco said. Vivo started to sell its pre-paid GSM handsets in São Paulo in December 2006. It now plans to launch a post-paid GSM option this month, offering a range of 23 handsets from six manufacturers with prices for the new handsets starting at BRL49 (USD23) for a monthly contract and BRL99 for a pay-as-you-go phone. Vivo, which is investing USD514 million on the rollout of its GSM network, says it is not abandoning its legacy CDMA network. ‘It is not our plan… at least for the foreseeable future… to deactivate our CDMA network,’ news service Info Online reported Vivo CEO Roberto Lima as saying. Vivo’s existing CDMA users however, can switch to a GSM handset without changing their number the company said.