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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Fancy who wrote (6576)	8/12/1998 6:02:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22640

Brazil's Telerj to invest 1.5 bln reais Wednesday August 12, 3:25 pm Eastern Time RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Brazilian telephone company Telerj (TERJ3.SA), which operates in Rio de Janeiro, said Wednesday it would invest 1.5 billion reais over the next 18 months. ''Telerj's investment plans are being expanded. We are going to invest 1.5 billion reais over the next 18 months,'' said Telerj President Geraldo Pereira de Araujo. Araujo said that 200 million reais will be spent to improve the quality of the telephone lines. He did not comment on where the rest of the investments would go. Telerj, the fixed-line operator that serves Rio de Janeiro state, is one of 16 telephone companies controlled by Tele Norte Lest, the holding that was bought by Telemar during the privatization auction of Telebras (TBR - news) last month. The winning group, headed by construction company Andrade Gutierrez, has been criticized by analysts concerned that the all-Brazilian investment group will face difficulty making investments. The group does not include a phone operator. Araujo said that Telerj plans to install 1.1 million new telephone lines by the end of 1999. He said that with the new lines, the group will be meeting requirements set by Brazil's watchdog telecommunications agency, Anatel. In the second half of the year alone, the company is going to install 400,000 new lines, with more than half of the installations occurring in the interior of the state. Araujo, who is also president of Tele Norte Leste, said Telerj is a priority for the new company. ''The recommendation we received from the new owners is to give absolute priority to Telerj,'' he said. ''That doesn't mean that the other operators are going to get worse, but the focus of the Tele Norte Leste project is Rio de Janeiro,'' Araujo said. Analysts consider Telerj one of the least attractive among Telebras' subsidiaries. The bad service spurred Rio de Janeiro residents to create an ''I hate Telerj'' site on the Internet. Araujo said that Telerj's deficiencies can be blamed on the fact that the company has only boosted the number of lines by 2.5 percent in the last 25 years while Brazil boosted overall lines by 10 percent.