Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to the Telefônica Brasil third quarter of 2021 earnings conference call. Today with us, representing the management of Telefônica Brasil, we have Mr. Christian Gebara, CEO of the company, Mr. David Melcon, CFO and Investor Relations Officer, and Mr. João Pedro Carneiro, IR Director. We also have a simultaneous webcast with slide presentation on the internet that can be accessed at the site www.telefonica.com.br/ir. There will be a replay facility for this call on the website. After the company's remarks are over, there will be a question and answer session. At the time, further instructions will be given. Should any participant need assistance during the conference call, please Press Star zero for an operator.
Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are being made under the safe harbor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on the company's management beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions, and other operating factors could also affect the company's future results and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Now, I will turn the conference over to Mr. João Pedro Carneiro, Investor Relations Director of Telefônica Brasil. Mr. Carneiro, you may begin your conference.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Telefônica Brasil's third quarter 2021 earnings call. Today's call will be divided in three parts. First, our CEO, Christian Gebara, will present Vivo's main financial and operating figures, as well as initiatives on the digital ecosystem and ESG highlights. Then our CFO, David Melcon, will give you more information regarding our cost and CapEx structure, net income, shareholder remuneration and free cash flow. We will then move to Q&A. I hand it over to Christian.
Thank you, João. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call. We start on Slide 3 with the highlights of a very positive quarter for Vivo, in which we had fixed revenues returning to year-over-year growth after four years. Mobile service revenue boasting the highest rate of annual evolution in six years, and solid profitability results that led us to maintain a robust interest on capital distribution and accelerate the buyback of our shares. In mobile, we reached 82 million accesses in September after growing 7.2% year-over-year. As a result of the accelerated expansion and accesses, our mobile service revenue expanded 5.7% year-over-year in the quarter.
Both the number of accesses and the rate of mobile service revenue growth are the best since 2015, denoting the strong momentum we are having on mobile with low churn, improved portability and market share leadership. In fixed, in third quarter 2021, we were able to post year-over-year growth for the first time after four years, up 0.4%, achieving a much awaited inflection point in a business that represents approximately 1/3 of our total revenues. The result was driven by the expressive growth of 14.8% of our core fixed business with our Star Play fiber to the home broadband, expanding 37.2% versus third quarter 2020 as we accelerate the rhythm of monthly net adds that during the first nine of the year surpassed the 100,000 mark on average.
Our solid revenue performance allow us to achieve EBITDA growth even during a period when inflation expanded double digits. EBITDA was up 2.1% year-over-year with a margin standing at 40% as costs remain largely under control due to efficient financial management leverage on digitalization. All of these factors led us to register a net income of BRL 1.3 billion in the quarter, up 8.5% year-over-year, giving us the base to continue providing the best shareholder returns in the industry by means of dividends and interest on capital deliberation as well as share buybacks. Going to Slide 4. Our total revenue expanded 2.2% year-over-year in the third quarter 2021, benefited by a solid performance of our core revenues, which grew 5.9% versus third quarter 2020.
Looking at the service core revenue that's excluding handsets, we see an expansion of 80% year-over-year, accelerating versus previous quarter as the demand from both B2C and B2B customers for high-quality connectivity and cutting-edge technological solution is allowing us to improve the revenue profile and access base mix, consolidating Vivo as a go-to player when it comes to the provision of a digital ecosystem. Turning to Slide 5. Here we represent our mobile revenue performance, which in the third quarter 2021 was remarkably strong in comparison to previous quarters. In fact, the 5.7% year-over-year growth of our mobile service revenue was the highest since the second quarter 2015, driven by a 7.3% growth in postpaid that came in well ahead of earlier periods.
Postpaid was not only benefited by the robust customer base expansion, which I would say on the next slide, but also by price increases in July and August 2021 applied to part of our hybrid and pure postpaid customers. Prepaid, in its turn, saw a slight 0.6% year-over-year decline in revenue in the third quarter 2021. It's interesting to note that on a sequential basis, we posted a growth of 3.9% as customer base increase and continues to shift to our weekly Vivo Pre Turbo offer, which guarantees higher usage and recurrency than daily offers. It's important to notice that in the third quarter 2021, our handset revenue dropped 19.8% year-over-year, partially hurt by the ongoing chipset supply shortage that impacts the whole smartphone industry.
by a tough comparison basis versus the third quarter of 2020, which was atypically high in terms of sales as most of our stores were closed during the second quarter 2020, thus creating higher demand for handsets in the third quarter of that year. As a result of all these moving pieces, mobile revenues expanded 3.2% year-over-year in the quarter. Moving to Slide 6, we can see that according to the latest publicly available data, Vivo continues to hold the top spot in terms of overall mobile market share. It's also true when looking at the postpaid and prepaid segments. This is underscored by our best-in-class network, unique brand recall within the sector, and widespread distribution channel.
Our unchallenged advantage was strengthened during the third quarter 2021, when we added 1.3 million new mobile customers, 996,000 in postpaid, and 292,000 in prepaid. As a result, we surpassed the mark of 82 million mobile access for the first time since second quarter 2015, growing 7.2% year-over-year. It's important to point out that not only our customers are choosing to stay at Vivo and increase their lifetime value, as we can see from the very low 1.2% postpaid churn rate registered in the third quarter 2021, but also that clients from other operators are increasingly joining our base, as demonstrated by the 134% year-over-year increase we had on postpaid portability net adds.
On Slide 7, we are very pleased to announce that our total fixed revenue grew 0.4% year-over-year in the third quarter 2021, expanding our early basis for the first time since the third quarter 2017, allowing us to finally reach a growth inflection point in this very important portion of our business. This is a result of years of investment in future-proof fiber-to-the-home technology that has placed us in the forefront when it comes to capturing the strong demand for high-speed connectivity and on the development of a comprehensive portfolio of solutions aimed at connecting and digitalizing businesses. We are able to dedicate our full force to the core fixed business by taking, in the past, assertive strategic decisions that accelerated the loss of non-core fixed revenues, but allow us to focus on what will bring sustainable growth and positive shareholder impact going forward.
As such, while the non-core fixed business continued to drop to the tune of 21.3% year-over-year, the core fixed business grew 14.8% as all service line posted double-digit growth, with FTTH broadband up 11.6%, IPTV up 23.4%, and corporate data and ICT up 17.1%, the latter reaching the impressive mark of almost BRL 800 million of revenue in the quarter. Moving to slide eight, we highlight the performance of our fiber-to-the-home business, which in the third quarter 2021 generated BRL 1.5 billion in revenues, considering both FTTH broadband and IPTV.
To reach this result, third quarter fiber revenues have been growing at the rhythm of 40.3% per year over the past two years, mainly driven by broadband that posted a 2019-2021 CAGR of 46.3% and already surpassed BRL 1.1 billion, but also helped by a solid 25.1% CAGR in IPTV. Moving to the right-hand side of the slide, we see that in the first nine months of 2021, we added 978,000 new FTTH broadband customers, already outgrowing the total net adds posted in 2020. This is happening as during 2021, we are having a very strong average of monthly net adds at 109,000, well ahead of figure posted in 2020 and in 2019.
It's interesting to note that while the fiber access base 2019-2021 CAGR of 32.3% is quite solid, it comes short of the revenue evolution by some 8 percentage points, denoting that fiber top line is coming not only from new access, but also from pricing power and improved customer mix. On Slide 9, you can see that we are doubling down our fiber ambition as we believe Brazil presents an unparalleled opportunity in terms of the relevant asymmetry between the demand for high quality, high speed, and reliable connectivity, which in the long run, can only be provided by players with pure fiber solutions like Vivo, and the still faulty offer of infrastructure enabled to provide such services. In this sense, we're updating our 2024 homes passed target to 29 million homes.
That's proposing to add around 11 million new homes passed on top of the 18.3 million we currently have. The organic portion of this expansion will be composed by the rollout of our FTTH network in new and existing cities, and by the overlay of existing FTTC and copper networks in selected areas. Here we are being benefited by a 60% drop over the past two years of our cost per home passed, which today on average is around BRL 160. The deployment expertise and efficiency, coupled with the growing scale, have enabled us to reach this important optimization. The home passed expansion will also have a partnership component with the usage of neutral infrastructure companies such as FiBrasil, which should contribute with almost 6 million homes passed to the 29 million target.
That's accelerating our time to market in mid-sized cities outside of São Paulo. Moving on to slide 10. Here we would like to give you more granularity on what is behind one of the main levers of Vivo's revenue growth, B2B digital services. Over the last 12 months, 23% of our total revenue came from our B2B business, of which 20% or approximately BRL 1.9 billion were generated through the sales of cloud, security, IT solutions, and equipment, and IoT and messaging services. With a growth of over 35% year-over-year, which is in line with the performance of high growth B2B tech companies around the globe. In Brazil, we are seeing companies of all sizes increasingly digitalizing their businesses as new ways of managing their processes and relating with their customers arise.
As such, at Vivo, we want to move away from the model of being just a connectivity provider for our B2B customers by having in place a digital ecosystem of solutions, offering both services designed in-house, such as IoT and messaging, but also products from top-tier partners such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Cisco. We firmly believe these B2B digital services will continue to expand in scope, bringing us a quality, recurring revenue flow with a compelling growth profile and customers with a high lifetime value. Turning to Slide 11. We present our most recent initiative aimed at complementing our B2C digital solutions ecosystem, which is comprised of verticals such as entertainment, financial services, health and wellness, connected homes, marketplace, and education.
We just signed a memorandum of understanding with Ânima Educação, Brazil's largest high-quality education company, to form a joint venture aimed at creating a business platform to offer digital nano courses focused on lifelong learning and employability in areas such as data science, programming, IT, among others. The courses will be sold not only to Vivo customers, but to anyone who wants to enjoy accessible quality content that can help in building skills according to personal interests and career aspirations. The JV will have a 50/50 co-control by both Vivo and Ânima, with a dedicated and fully independent team to run the operation. Moreover, the new co will be able to take advantage of important assets and expertise from its parent companies to gain scale and traction, such as Vivo's client acquisition, go-to-market and billing capabilities, and Ânima's educational content, academic operations, and online learning platform.
This is another step we take to position Vivo as a company that goes beyond offering top-notch telecommunication services, using our assets, tools, and reach to promote the digital inclusion through education. On Slide 12, I would like to comment on the evolution of initiatives including our ESG agenda. We continue to expand our distributed energy generation program and now plan on having 83 renewable energy plants functioning by the end of 2022, of which 19 are already fully operational. Here we highlight the inauguration of our first biogas plant in the northeast region in the state of Pernambuco, with the capacity to generate over 18,000 megawatt-hours per year. On the diversity front, we just launched our new internship program offering 750 intern positions, of which 50% will be filled by Black students.
Moreover, we are striving to make our leadership team significantly more diverse. By the end of 2021, 30% of all leadership positions at Vivo will be occupied by women. We are also working with Wayra, the Telefónica Group's innovation hub, to support disruptive startup scale in their businesses. Recent investees include the fintech startup Olivia, which offers an AI and machine learning-backed financial advisor solution. The security startup Gabriel, that develops technologies focused on security and image monitoring. Alicerce, a social edtech that delivers high quality, affordable tutoring for children and young adults. GamerSafer, a cybersecurity startup that provides user authentication and anti-fraud services for online games.
All of them present significant cross-sell opportunities with Vivo. As always, I believe it's important to stress that ESG themes are a centerpiece of all that we do as a company to create value for society and all other stakeholders in a sustainable and compliant way. Now, I hand it over to David to take us through the financial highlights of the quarter.
Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everyone. On Slide 13, we show our recurring cost evolution in the quarter. As presented over the previous slides, Vivo is speeding up the growth of its revenue based on focusing on core businesses that deliver both connectivity, infrastructure, and digital solutions. Our cost base is changing accordingly, but annual growth remains well below inflation due to our continued digitalization and simplification efforts. As a result, this quarter, our total cost grew 2.3% year-over-year, where inflation for the last 12 months reached 10%.
Cost of services and goods sold that are directly impacted by the shift in revenues mix represented 28% of all costs we had in the quarter and contracted 3% year-over-year as cost of goods sold fell 18% impacted by the lower volumes of handset sales in comparison to the previous year. On the other hand, cost of services grew 8.7% as a result of higher volumes of software licenses and digital content sales. Now moving to our cost of operations that represent 72% of the expenditure we had in the quarter. Here, we saw a year-over-year growth of 4.5%, impacted not only by the double-digit inflation registered over the last 12 months, but also by the strong commercial activity posted by Vivo in the period. Now moving to Slide 14.
Here we show how the year-over-year evolution of our revenues and cost base led to a recurring EBITDA of BRL 4.4 billion, posting an annual growth of 2.1% in this quarter with a margin of 40%. This positive performance was delivered as we continue to strive with the capture of operating efficiencies with the digitalization of processes related to the client acquisitions, customer care, billing and collection, among others. Giving us an edge, not only in terms of results, but also when it comes to overall customer satisfaction and experience. Here, we also show that this quarter, we had a positive non-recurring effect of BRL 417 million related to the partial sale of FiBrasil, the fiber infrastructure company we created in partnership with CDPQ and Telefónica Infra.
Considering this effect, we had EBITDA growth of 11.8% year-over-year in the quarter. On Slide 15, we can see that this quarter we invested BRL 2.2 billion in our operation, representing 19.5% of the sales we had in the quarter, and leading to a nine-month capital expenditure of BRL 6.3 billion. This quarter, around 88% of the amount we invested was directly to growth and transformation projects, meaning we continue to accelerate our fiber to the home deployment, enhance our mobile network capacity and quality, and improve our IT systems and data platforms to optimize our day-to-day operations. To update you on the network sharing agreement we have with TIM, during this quarter, we successfully completed the 50 cities pilot for the full network consolidation.
This was a very important step between the scope of this agreement, and now both parties are negotiating the potential extension of the Single Grid initiatives to a much larger number of cities. Moreover, the joint 4G coverage expansion was concluded while the 2G switch-off continues to advance as planned. We are also investing to prepare our network for the upcoming 5G technology. At the end of the quarter, we had 5G DSS fully operating in eight major cities, while more than 90% of our sites were fiber-in in Brazil's 50 largest municipalities. Additionally, almost 2,400 cities already have Vivo's 4.5G coverage, guaranteeing an enhanced 4G experience that drives to higher data usage. Moving to Slide 16.
During this quarter, our net income reached BRL 1.3 billion after growing 8.5% year-over-year, thus taking our nine-month profit to BRL 3.6 billion, up 3.6%. This strong performance allowed us to maintain our trend of providing one of the highest and most consistent shareholder remuneration among Brazilian companies. During the first nine months this year, we declared BRL 1.9 billion of interest on capital. When we consider all the dividend plus interest on capital deliberation that took place over the last 12 months, our dividend yield amount to 7.4%.
We are also accelerating the buyback of our shares, investing almost BRL 400 million to repurchase 8.9 million shares between January and September this year, thus closing the quarter with 11.7 million shares in treasury, which translate into 0.7% of our total equity. Note that in order to keep increasing shareholder returns, Vivo is evaluating canceling the shares in treasury in the near future. On October 5, we also paid out the second tranche of the dividend plus interest on capital delivered through 2020 in the amount of BRL 2.8 billion, totaling BRL 5.4 billion in remuneration related to the last year results, a solid BRL 3.19 per share.
Moving to the latest Slide 17. As of September, we generate BRL 6.7 billion of free cash flow, reinforcing our very strong balance sheet profile and allowing us to fund the acquisition of both Oi's mobile assets and the spectrum being auctioned next week. These figures represent a free cash flow yield of 10.2% and a free cash flow margin of 16.9%, even with CapEx growing in the period. As a result, and to conclude, we grow the quarter with a net cash position excess of BRL 7.1 billion, representing a considerable and constant improvement year-to-date. Now we can move to the Q&A.
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you have a question, please Press Star one on your touch-tone phone at this or any time. If at any point your question is answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by Pressing Star two. Our first question comes from Andre Salles, UBS. Please proceed.
Hi, all. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I have a question on the business digital segment. How relevant do you see the digital revenues during the upcoming quarters, and how do you plan to sustain the current pace of growth on this opportunity? Thanks.
Hi, Andre, that's Christian answering here. For the first time, we detailed the digital service or B2B. Now we have two segments, B2B and B2C. Talking first of B2B, we showed that 12-month growth, that is robust growth and very accelerated. Here we include what we called cloud security, IoT, messaging, IT equipment, et cetera. That's all related to B2B. We believe that's continued to grow. We see the demand for these type of services accelerating in companies, especially after the pandemic period, that companies want to be with their content online or on cloud, and they want everyone to be accessing it. There is a lot of movement in this segment, and I think we are very well positioned.
Because we have our own portfolio and a leverage on Telefónica Tech, that is the companies from the group, but also in partnerships that we have solid ones with Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, just to mention some of them. Going to the B2C, it's a different business model. We're gonna do distribution of digital services we do in entertainment. We've been very successful distributing video OTTs over fiber, for instance. Around 30% of our FTTH new adds come with one of these OTT entertainment bundles. I mean here for Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Star+, among others.
We are also in the mobile plans on postpaid Vivo Selfie, they also come with one of these OTTs embedded, and we have also been very successful on this. We are also launching a sort of new business that has a more of an independent vision going forward. That is the one that we launched in health. That is a partnership with Teladoc that is focused in telemedicine in the beginning, but also with some other partnerships to create a health marketplace. The one that we've just announced in education, it'll be a new business as well. In this case, it's already a memorandum of understanding to build together with Ânima JV, that we focus on having something very unique in the market.
That is an app for education that will be very focused in giving content, very short content to people to develop new skills, especially for those that don't have like university degree and needs to get more knowledge to a better employment. It's Ometer Jobs. That different type of business. How much they will represent of our revenues, we're not giving a figure on it. We may give more color on this in the future. Apart from having some business that by itself will have value, so in the case of education, we're creating a business that by itself may have independent value. We are for sure now creating more loyalty to Vivo.
The idea here is really to create a digital ecosystem around the 97 million access that we have, leverage on the channel that we have. There's an omni-channel that's physical, but it's also online. Leverage on the big data, leverage on the brand, leverage on our billing capability, and create an ecosystem that we can gain more engagement, more of the expenditure of the customers in digital services and for sure, more loyalty in the telco business as well.
It was very clear. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Marcelo Santos to J.P. Morgan.
Hi, good morning, Christian, David, João, Gabriel. I wanted to ask a question about the incremental increase in the outlook for fiber homes passed. Now you're targeting 29 million. Are these 5 million incremental homes passed to be done by Vivo and not FiBrasil? Because you continue to mention 5million-6 million homes in FiBrasil, which was what you said in the second quarter. But you had a different guidance for homes passed in Vivo. Are these new homes passed being passed entirely by Vivo? The follow-up question is. What's the impact on CapEx that we should expect from this plan into 2024?
Maybe the last one would be related to what are the target cities? What kind of regions or cities could you share some description of what kind of cities that you'll be entering with this extra Home Pass? Thank you.
Marcelo, thank you for the question. I will try to answer what we can answer. No, the cities, as you may understand, we are, you know, like already in the large cities. We are just focusing now in the mid-sized cities. We continue with the strategy widespread along all the regions of the country. In some of the cities that we already have presence, we may reinforce our presence in some neighborhoods that we still haven't reached. Also considering these numbers, the overlay of DSL and FTTC, we still have room to do that. That's more focused in DSL in the state of São Paulo, in FTTC, some of the cities that we inherited from the acquisition of GVT.
This number that we accelerated, now, especially the CapEx will be the same trend, so there is no change in CapEx. I think what we're to highlight here is the CapEx related to Home Pass, now that we are presenting a drop. Also, if you consider what we have as a number in the third quarter 2019 was BRL 400. We are presenting now BRL 160. As leverage on that scale, that we are being able to capture a lower price in HP and also in Home Connected, we see room to accelerate it what we previously present as 24 million for 2024, now going to 29. There will be a combination of the models that we have today, organic, built by Vivo, and Vivo Brazil.
In this moment, we don't share how much is gonna be coming from each, but it's gonna be a combination of both. Also, using the other partnerships that we have, as the one that we have in Minas Gerais with American Tower. It's a combination of the three. What is not in this number is franchising that we are doing separately because we don't get all the full revenues, but all just the franchisee payment of royalties. It's what the number that we are presenting here is it building on what we have as partnerships today, more organic and overlay over FTTH, C, and DSL.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Frederico Mendes, Bank of America.
Hello, good morning, everyone, and thanks for the call. I have two questions as well. The first one, you mentioned that the network sharing agreement with TIM is doing well. So for 2022, are you planning to give any disclosure about this, the NPV from this partnership? I know you don't give a guidance for the digital initiatives on the B2C, but just trying to measure here, for 2022, what do you believe will be more relevant, the impact, this partnership with TIM or all of the B2C partnerships combined, right? That would be my first question. Then my second question, when I look at the ARPU on the FTTH, it's basically flat, right? Very small decrease on this quarter.
Do you believe we are already reaching a peak with this BRL 90 ARPU or maybe there's something specific for this quarter with more competition and then a slight pressure on price? Thank you.
Hi, Fred. This is Christian. The share with TIM goes according to plan. We are very positive about the opportunity that we may get from this, and maybe the opportunity to even expand beyond what we're doing. I think we presented in the past, and now it has three big areas. The first one was the 4G in small cities. We already deployed it in 716 cities, 360 more or less for each operators. We are providing coverage in places where they don't have coverage, and they are providing coverage for us in places that we didn't have coverage. That's the first one that we did. There's a single grid model that is maybe the most complex one in terms of deployment.
We did a pilot in 50 cities, 25 each operator. Results are being mapped out right now. They are good, so we expect to do it more cities, you know, and then you have a plan for more than 1,000 cities in next year. This year, we may start deployment in maybe 100 cities each and having like this 1,600 cities for the future. In the 2G, there's a shutdown. Here also we are preparing our systems for doing something like this. The plan is again under the schedule that we defined before.
The objective here is to do the shutting down in some of the cities that we both have 2G and the other one will be offering the solution to the other one in 2022. That's basically how the plan. Of course, all these initiatives will bring us CapEx and OpEx savings for both companies. We don't give the figure, but we are positive and also to open us some fronts for the future, not only more 4G cities with larger sizes, but also consider 5G could also be an opportunity going forward. Don't know if there is a second piece in this part, but going to the FTTH ARPU. Now, I think the FTTH ARPU, if you see the in the year, you know, in the nine months of the year, we are growing ARPU around 6%.
If you go to the specific quarter, we may have some like promotions in a specific month that could be impacting ARPU and some smaller cities where the entry point will be a little bit lower in speed that we had in the previous quarter. What we believe is a lot of momentum. Our net adds are accelerating. Our total revenue is growing a lot as you could see all the numbers presented. We believe we all should be very rational about pricing in fiber. Also, now with the inflation that we are seeing, maybe next year price adjustment will be needed, and we are very open to do so and rational in a business that requires investment, and we should be very wise about how competitors also will behave because I believe we all need that.
We are also reinforcing our presence in the convergence arena that I think we are the leader in this one. Offering attractive but not irrational offer for customers that are both mobile and fixed with us. Also, as I said before, accelerating the bundled offer with IPTV when customer wants it. Also we are totally open because we're not defending the IPTV business because of our market share, but we are very open to bundle fiber with video OTT. Being very successful, that has a good impact also in improving our ARPU. Doing that with Netflix, Amazon, now launching Disney+ and Star+, and other offers will be coming in the next months.
Very clear. Appreciate.
Thank you, Fred.
Our next question comes from Carlos Sequeira, BTG Pactual. Please proceed.
Hi. Morning, Christian, Dave, João, Gabriel, and all the team. Thank you very much for taking my question. I will follow up on Fred's question on FTTH. And maybe I have a couple there. One is if you can give us an overall view of the competitive environment. I know there's a lot of talk in the market after all the IPOs from the ISPs, from some ISPs. And maybe you can give us some overview of how you are seeing competition and how you're competing against these players that are becoming bigger and now with more money on their hands. And maybe another question on FTTH and expansion.
You know, you were growing in basically three ways by doing investment yourself via FiBrasil and also with the partnership with American Tower. I'm wondering if there are any other you know avenues or partnerships you can cut to try to grow even faster. Maybe you're exploring other neutral networks or maybe a partnership with larger ISPs. Just wondering if there is any other thing you can do to make this expansion even faster, which by the way is amazing today.
Okay. Carlos, thank you for your question and your comments. Let's see. It's a lot of questions now in one. Let me, yes, there are many ISPs, and they're different nature, the ISPs. Now, some of them are very focused in very small cities, and our overlap is very limited. There are others, you know, as you very well described, that may be competing face-to-face with us. I believe we have assets that they don't have. I believe our network, again, I won't give you names of the ISPs. I think there are different natures and different companies. Some of them, they don't have the same type of technology in the network that we have.
I believe when speeds, the demand for high speeds come as one strong demand from customers, we are much better prepared to respond to the demand for the configuration of our network and for the CPE that we are using. There is also the content part in the TV, IPTV. Still there are a number of customers that require IPTV, so when they're faced with this type of competition, we are better equipped to respond to these customers. There is also agreements with OTT. They can offer OTT video, but we have in most of the arrangements that could offer to these customers a better value proposition. There is the mobile piece that we are now using it in a very aggressive way.
We don't expect to use it in a very aggressive way, but of course, again, it's another competitive advantage that we have, being the leading company in both postpaid and prepaid. All these plans and together with the channel capillary that we have and all these new agreements that we are building with the digital ecosystem, I believe we are in a very strong position to compete and to continue with this net adds, very, very good ones. Again, being very wise in the price. I don't want to, although I can, I don't want to reduce price.
I think we should all be careful about the ARPU of the fiber and be very rational not to get into a price war that I don't think is gonna be beneficial to anyone, but specifically for the smaller ones, it will be even worse. Going forward in the model, yes, we are very positive about our partnership with FiBrasil. We are very keen on doing well the plan that we have defined with them. We continue with this one. We continue with the partnership for American Tower, as I said, in Minas Gerais. We continue with the franchising model that's building a lot of new cities, and it's good for smaller cities, and we continue also betting on this. Some of the partners that are our partners in the channel, resellers are also investing in fiber.
It's a good combination to strengthen my partners because they're gonna be a reseller of mobile, but also a fiber franchise. It's a good one. Of course, we are open to see different type of partnerships. The key partner is Vivo, but we are open to listen to other opportunities. As we see now, there are other neutral fiber companies in the market. Regarding the smaller ISPs, it always depends on the quality of the assets. I mean quality in all terms, technical, fiscal, and the customer orientation that they may have.
Perfect, Christian. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Carlos.
Thank you. Once again, if you have a question, please Press Star one on your touch-tone phone, at this or any time. In case you are following the conference call via webcast, please Click on Question to the Host to send your question. Please hold while we poll for questions. Please hold. Please hold while we poll for questions. Our next question comes from Alejandro Gallostra. Please proceed.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Could you please provide a further explanation about how you managed to decrease the cost per home pass that much over the past two years? If those costs are exposed to FX fluctuations, and how much you can decrease this cost in the future? I was wondering if this is the actual cost of passing a new home or if you are averaging that cost with the homes passed that you gained through partnerships as well. Third, if I may, I was wondering if you could provide us with the additional cost of interconnecting each home once you acquire the customer. Thank you.
Hi, Alejandro. No, the cost is our cost. It's not considering partnerships. It's the cost that people deploying the home pass. FX has very limited impact. I think here is the combination of our expertise, the scale of the equipment that we are using, our ability to build, because now the expertise is not only local but is also international, as we are one of the leading group in fiber in the world. It's a combination of many things. We are very positive about the possibility of going down in the future. It's also important when you compare our number with other numbers, that it all depends a lot in the city that we're deploying.
When you're deploying a very small city, maybe the cost may be a little bit lower than the one that I'm presenting here. That's why sometimes some companies present a number that's different from ours. Also, we are building infrastructure. We are not renting, for instance, wholesale traffic or backhaul. That's why we also are building on. Also when we go to CPE and the home connected that you are describing here, we use top equipment, and the price also is going down and is around BRL 800 today, the home connected, okay? Without IPTV, fiber connected.
BRL 800. Okay, thank you very much for the explanations.
No problem. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Marcelo Santos, J.P. Morgan.
Hi, thanks for the follow-up. I wanted to ask you about the prepaid to postpaid migration. You have been having a lot of success, and I think that's part of your strong postpaid revenue growth. How much more space is there for you to fish in the prepaid aquarium? Is the fact that the economy is deteriorating and the macro outlook is not good like slows down this process? Thank you very much.
Marcelo, we're still being very positive commercially in acquiring new customers from prepaid. The lake that we could use for migration is still very large. That's why we're still being very successful in migrating. I see the possibility are still there. We continue to do that. Again, after all this movement that we have, the competitive movement that we have in the market may also give us opportunity to get more prepaid customers and also migrate to the future. I think here it's much more how do I migrate? Also there is a possibility to upsell within the hybrid, that we are also doing that, and also adding to this hybrid customer new digital services. Also I think that's the opportunity to increase the ARPU. Positive that we still have room to go.
Of course, the economic situation of the country impacts the prepaid. Now we have the new government aid, now that was approved, that's positive for the prepaid. Also, once that's in place, it will be a positive impact in the prepaid. Going forward commercially, we continue to be strong. Possibility to migrate is still there, and we should consider incremental ARPU in the hybrid if we are commercially successful in giving more services to the customers already in our customer base.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Next question comes from Carlos Sequeira, BTG. Please proceed.
Hi. Thank you for taking my follow-up question. Now switching to mobile and the 5G auction, we all saw yesterday that there were 15 bidders for the upcoming auction, naturally, Vivo was one of the bidders. My question is, do you anticipate any increasing competition coming from these, you know, potential new bidders? Or do you think they are more, they are going to focus more on maybe niche opportunities? Or how do you see. You know, I know it's early, and you know, the auction is only next week, but how do you see the interest that was shown by these potential bidders in the upcoming auction, please?
One more, I know this might be a little sensitive, but there are news in all newspapers talking about maybe a discussion between CADE, the antitrust, and the three telcos that made an offer to buy Oi. Is it a negotiation or how do you expect this to move forward or are you just waiting for CADE's final say, probably in February next year?
Carlos, for the second question, that's the standard process of an approval of operation that size. We've been interacting through lawyers in the normal process of the technical team in CADE. Nothing different from what was expected. Although the operation was very well designed, as I said before, both in the spectrum split and customer split, complying with all requirements, both from the regulatory agency and the CADE. Normal discussions in an operation this size. In the 5G, as you know, Cadu, it's a large auction. We call it 5G, but it's a lot of things there. Some of these blocks have a different configuration. Some of them start in national, then re-become regional. Some of them are regional from scratch. We're also talking about the very high bands, millimetric bands.
There are so many configurations and opportunities for players that the number of players don't say a lot. Also, let's wait for the auction itself, because we really don't know who is betting for what. Now, that's something that you will just find out on the day of the auction. But the names that we saw are names that are already acting here in this market, in telecommunication, one way or another. No. Let's see what their real interests are. I think it's an auction that are many different things and a lot of obligation. Now, as you know, there is a lot of investment committed to the acquisition of any of the blocks. So I believe we have a very strong position to be very competitive because we've been investing in the country for so many years.
We have a customer base that is unique, and we have the infrastructure already in place that give us much more scale and synergies going forward, comply with the new obligations that will be put in place. Let's wait next week.
Perfect. Thank you, Christian.
Thank you.
This concludes the question and answer session for today. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to Mr. Christian Gebara for any closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone. As final remarks, just to highlight that we are very excited now about our fixed revenues now growing now after so many quarters that we've been talking about this transition and reverse trend. Also very optimistic about our business going forward, now totalizing customers in mobile and fixed, but also in the digital opportunity that we see ahead, being a key player in a digital ecosystem in our country. Thank you all, and we are always here available for any further questions you may have. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's Telefônica Brasil third Q 2021 results conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a nice day.