The story
From 1993 to 1999, the company provided services under the Miniphone brand in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA) in conjunction with Telecom Argentina. Since then, and due to regulatory provisions, the company was divided among its shareholders, and both Telefónica Argentina and Telecom Argentina have provided services independently, using the brands Telefónica Unifón and Telecom Personal, respectively.
The Unifón brand was used until 2005, when Telefónica S.A. bought BellSouth's cellular networks in Latin America; resulting in the merger between Unifón and Movicom, and the change of trade name to Movistar, as well as the unification of the trade name at a continental level.
During 2005, the company had more than 3100 employees and invested more than 450 million pesos, mostly allocated to the deployment of the GSM network, especially in the installation of equipment and expansion of service platforms.
At the beginning of 2012, Movistar had 16.7 million customers, placing it in third position among mobile phone operators in Argentina, behind Claro Argentina and Telecom Personal.
Sale in 2025
On February 24, 2025, Telefónica Hispanoamérica reached an agreement with Telecom Argentina to sell all of its shares in Telefónica Argentina. The transaction is valued at US$1.245 billion.
Likewise, since the approval of the purchase is still being disputed by the Argentine government, it was revealed in September 2025 that Telecom Argentina is in negotiations with Telefónica to extend the use of its brands in Argentina, mainly Movistar.
From Wikipedia’s article on Movistar Argentina, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4