VTR (Chile)

VTR (an acronym for Vía Trans Radio Chilena, formerly known as VTR Banda Ancha and VTR Cablexpress/Hipercable) is a Chilean telecommunications company that provides cable television, IPTV, landline telephony, fiber optics, Internet access, and mobile telephony services nationwide.

In addition to its core activities, it operates the long-distance carrier 111, offers an on-demand content service (VTR+, formerly VTR On Demand), and an over-the-top platform that allows streaming access to the channels available on its service, VTR Play.

Throughout its nearly 100-year history, the company has faced numerous processes of business strategy changes, ownership, and mergers and acquisitions: under the control of the Luksic Group between 1980 and 2000, VTR focused on long-distance services and the nascent mobile telephony business, a business it would sell to its partner CTC in the late 1990s. Following the massification of cable television in Chile in the early 2000s, the company merged with multiple operators, including Metrópolis Intercom—owned by Grupo Claro, CTC, and El Mercurio—and a group of regional cable operators owned by its later controlling shareholder, Liberty Global, which acquired in 2014 the 20% stake that Álvaro Saieh held in the company through VivoCorp.

During the 2000s, VTR again transformed its model to offer broadband Internet access services to its subscribers through a hybrid fiber optic and coaxial cable network, becoming the first Chilean telecommunications operator to offer this product to consumers. Later, the company added landline telephone and IP television services over the same network, consolidating its market dominance under the "Triple Pack" model. VTR Móvil, a failed foray into 4G mobile telephony, joined the offering in 2013 after winning spectrum alongside WOM in the AWS band tender held by SUBTEL.

Following a massive customer flight following the pandemic, VTR announced the establishment of a joint venture with Claro Chile in late September 2021 in a joint statement by Liberty Latin America and América Móvil, the parent companies of both companies. The new joint venture was named ClaroVTR. In October 2022, the National Economic Prosecutor's Office authorized the merger, but required the sale of Claro's satellite television business, given the FNE's long-standing ban on VTR offering such services since 2004.

In early 2023, VTR moved its corporate campus to Claro Chile's offices in Ciudad Empresarial, Huechuraba, leaving behind its historic location on Avenida Apoquindo in Las Condes.

Since 2024, VTR has been 91% owned by the multinational América Móvil and 9% by Liberty Media.

 See also 
Claro

Claro Chile

 References 
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Category:1928
Category:Chile