Claro Brasil

Company Overview

Claro SA, trading as Claro, was launched in 2003 following a merger between América Móvil-owned operators ATL, BCP, Americel, Tess Celular, and Claro Digital who previously served mutually exclusive regions, to form a single nationwide mobile carrier. The company is a fully owned subsidiary of Claro Telecom Participações SA, a group holding company designed to oversee operations of its Brazilian cellular, fixed, and ISP service companies. Claro Telecom itself is a subsidiary of América Móvil S.A.B. de C.V, an international telecommunications group with operations in a range of countries throughout South America.

Claro operates standard 2G GSM services over 900 and 1800 MHz, and 3G UMTS over B1 (2100 MHz) and B5 (850 MHz) since November 2007. The company initially launched 4G LTE services over B7 (2600 MHz) in April 2013, following with B3 (1800 MHz) in 2015. After government regulator Anatel auctioned 700 MHz spectrum in August 2014, the company began testing of 3C LTE-A combining new B28 (700 MHz) LTE with its existing B3 and B7 services. LTE-A was launched in June 2016, with further upgrades over 2017 to provide 4X4 MIMO and 256QAM operation in "4.5G" areas. The company also operates a B31 (450 MHz) network to provide LTE coverage in rural areas.

Claro IoT

Claro has expressed intentions to deploy eMTC and NB-IoT as its preferred IoT technology types, and began live trials in October 2017. In February 2019 the company announced it will launch both NB-IoT and LTE-M networks commercially in April. Claro is aiming for complete nationwide LTE-M/NB-IoT coverage by the end of the year.