Meo (mobile phone company)

MEO - Serviços de Comunicações e Multimédia SA

Type	Sociedade Anónima
Industry	Telecommunications
Founded	22 March 1991 (1991-03-22)
Headquarters	Lisbon, Portugal
Key people	Paulo Neves
Products	mobile telephony, Internet services
Parent	Portugal Telecom
Website	meo.pt

MEO - Serviços de Comunicações e Multimédia SA (formerly known as TMN), headquartered in Lisbon, is Portugal's first mobile communications company, both chronologically and in market share.

Chronology

1991

• Created on March 22, to take on the only existing mobile service in Portugal, based on an analogue network launched in 1989 by TLP (Lisbon and Oporto's phone service) and CTT (Portuguese Postal Service/national phone service), both State companies. The network prefix was 0676.
• In December, Marconi (Portuguese international phone service, also a State company) bought into the company; ownership became equally split among the three partners.

1992

• In March, regulatory agency ICP-Instituto das Comunicações de Portugal (Communications Institute of Portugal) announced the winners of the public bids for two licenses for mobile services through GSM. One winner was TMN; the second winner was a private consortium formed for the bid, called Telecel (later bought by Vodafone).
• In May, the first GSM call was placed. Prefix was 0936.
• On October 8, the GSM service was commercially launched.

1993

• In May, the first roaming call was made.
• In October, TMN launched the voice mail service for free to all customers.

1994

• TMN was incorporated into Portugal Telecom, the State-run telecom born from the merger of TLP, Marconi and Telecom Portugal (spin-off from CTT).

1995

• Inauguration, in February, of the digital network in the Madeira island.
• In September, launch of MIMO, the world's first prepaid mobile service.

1996

• In April, a new logo was presented.
• In June, launch of SPOT, a prepaid tariff for younger customers.
• In July, inauguration of the digital network in the Azores.

1998

• In April, TMN was the first Portuguese operator to adopt billing by the second as imposed by law.
• TMN reached one million customers.
• In September, third GSM competitor was launched: Optimus (now NOS).

1999

• TMN reached two million customers. It got its second million customers in just one year, as opposed to nine years for the first million.
• ICP granted to TMN a license for Fixed phone services, with prefix 1096. TMN would only offer this service to its corporate customers, backed on its parent company's landline network.

2000

• Prefix of TMN was changed to 96 as part of an overall restructuring of the national numbering system.

2003

• In June, TMN launched a mobile portal, i9 (pronounced innov), on the trail of Vodafone live!, launched in November 2005.

2005

• On September 28, TMN introduced a new logo, shown above.

2014

• On January, it is reported that Portugal Telecom will discontinue TMN brand and merge it with Meo.

Football Sponsoring

From the start of the 2008–2009 Season of the Liga Sagres, tmn has been the shirt sponsor for S.L. Benfica, F.C. Porto & Sporting Lisbon.

Slogan

• 1991-1993: "O serviço telemóvel" (The Service Mobile)
• 1993-1994: "Dê ouvidos a Quem Sabe" (Listen to Who Knows)
• 1994-2005: "Mais perto do que é importante" (Closer to what is important)
• 2005-2012: "Até já." (See you.)
• 2012-2014: "Vamos lá." (Let's go)
• 2014: "A outra vida da TMN." (The other life of TMN)
• 2014-2015: "É outra vida." (It's another life)
• 2015-...: "O mundo é Meo." (The world is Meo)

Other Slogan

• 2003-2004: "Não Fale Inove" (Do not talk, innovate [Pronounced in Portuguese as "innov", in reference to the aforementioned i9 service])
• 2004: "Agora qualquer sítio é um sítio da net" (Now any place is a web site)
• 2004-2005: "Veja como fala" (See how you speak)
• 2005: "5 Milhões Sempre Consigo" (5 million always with you)
• 2011: "Nunca mais acaba" (It never ends)

CEOs

• 1992–1996: Romão Mateus
• 1996–2005: Iriarte Esteves
• 2005–2014: Zeinal Bava
• 2014–2015: Armando Almeida
• 2015–current: Paulo Neves