Vivo (telecommunications) region Vivo owns the following brands: Vivo (telecommunications) Vivo (, Portuguese for "alive"), is a brand of Telefônica Brasil, the largest telecommunications company in Brazil. It is headquartered both in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The company was originally formed as part of Telebrás, the state-owned telecom monopoly at the time. In 1998, Telebrás was demerged and privatized. Telefónica bought Telesp, the São Paulo division, and rebranded it to Telefónica. On 15 April 2012, all Telefonica services were rebranded again to Vivo, using the same strategy of unifying all its services in a unique brand, like Movistar (Hispanic America
Alcohol monopoly alcohol monopoly also formerly existed in Taiwan between 1947 and 2002, when the Taiwanese market was opened to overseas brands as part of its admission to the WTO in 2002. The alcohol monopoly was created in the Swedish town of Falun in 1850, to prevent overconsumption and reduce the profit motive for sales of alcohol. It later went all over the country in 1905 when the Swedish parliament ordered all sales of vodka to be done via local alcohol monopolies. In 1895, Russia established a state monopoly on alcohol, which became a major source of revenue for the Russian government.