All Telefonica markets to be rebranded as Movistar
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Mar 13th 2009 12:28PM
posted Mar 13th 2009 12:28PM
Movistar is already Telefonica's mobile brand around the world, but the Telefonica name lives on for some of the company's other services like wireline -- for now, anyhow. At a recent directors' meeting in Madrid, Telefonica announced that all of its services around the world would be rebranded as Movistar, both mobile and otherwise; only O2 will survive the consolidation in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia along with the Vivo brand in Brazil. If you're getting all teary-eyed about the change, take solace in the knowledge that Telefonica will live on as the corporate parent of the whole mess -- just don't expect to be picking up a Telefonica payphone in Spain anymore.
Telefónica in brazil is called Vivo (yes, it means "Live" in Portuguese).
it's more like "Alive" to me. BTW, I'm from Brazil, and Vivo is a joint venture between Telefónica and Portugal Telecom.
and PT has brands in Portugal such as Sapo ADSL ("sapo" means "frog", and its logo is a frog) and Meo (their IPTV/satellite service, based on the word "meu", which means "mine", and their slogan is "o comando é meu", "the command is mine").
Telefonica will change the name trying to take out its own stigma of bad (non mobile) carrier here in Brazil.
Their customer services has just won the top of the worst for the third year in a row.
I don't think that will happen here, since the movistar brand was used only as a secondary brand (when still was "MoviStar") for Telefónica's mobile networks here, and was dropped when their mobile operations merged with Portugal Telecom's and formed Vivo nearly 6 years ago.
"take solace in the knowledge that Telefonica will live on as the corporate parent of the whole mess"
I couldn´t describe it better myself, as this company is indeed a complete mess...In Spain we call it "vomistar"
Wow... this is catchy :-D Vomistar
Thanks god that portability has finally arrived in Brazil and I was able to escape this shi##y company
In Venezuela their service is so bad; they're known as "Malestar"
Malestar = That feeling you get when you eat something that doesn't sit well in your stomach.
Vivo is a mobile operator owned 50/50 by PT (Portugal Telecom) and Telefónica.
I think it's a successfull one, leader in its market.
Just as long as people don't start calling it movie star.
What's different? If O2 and Vivo aren't changing, there isn't much of a change. Calling the landline division MOVIstar is pointless since the landline service is not MOVIL (mobile).
the name "movistar" (BTW, it's always written all-lowercase) wouldn't work in non-Spanish-language markets, that's why the O2 brand will continue being used there.
as seen in that story, they want to do the same thing as France Télécom/Orange and Oi (Portuguese for "hi") – formerly Telemar – which started as their mobile brands and have become their umbrella brands for nearly everything: mobile, landline, broadband, TV...