Brazil counted a total of 156 million broadband users, in May, an increase of 51 percent over the same period last year, Telecompaper.com reports, citing a survey of the Brazilian Telecommunications Association (Telebrasil).

It got 53 million new users in the last 12 months, an activation rate of 1.7 new connections per second. There were 132.6 million mobile broadband connections (3G-4G) by the end of May, up 62 percent year-on-year, including 116.8 million smartphones and 15.8 million data terminals, such as modems and M2M Sims.

In the fixed broadband segment, there were 23.3 million connections, in May, with 2 million of them activated in the last 12 months. There were also 2.8 million 4G technology users by the end of May. LTE service currently covers 113 Brazilian cities and 38 percent of the population.