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09/15/2007W2i São Paulo: Brazil Builds on Broadband Momentum
For the past three years, W2i has watched with sustained interest the advancing connectivity and digital-city efforts in the State of Rio de Janeiro, beginning with the City of Piraí in 2004. Followed by Rio das Flores, Mangaratiba, Macaé, and others, these efforts have been spurred on by the State’s past and current governors; shepherded by PRODERJ, its Center for Information and Communication Technology (see article); and supported by the private sector, including Intel, Motorola, Cisco, Telemar, and NextWave. At the W2i Digital Cities Convention in São Paulo, a presentation by PRODERJ Vice President Paulo Coelho (see the panel "Jumpstarting Broadband-Wireless Infrastructure") reflected this maturity, tracing developments all the way from Piraí to Parathy. With even more vendors supporting close to a dozen pilot projects—beyond Motorola and Cisco there are Alcatel, Nortel, GO Networks, and Redline Communications—W2i expects the rate of implementation throughout the State and, gradually across Brazil, to increase steadily. Adding to the momentum, in March Brazil’s regulatory authority ANATEL approved new rules allowing the country’s 5,500 municipalities to offer free broadband-wireless access to constituents through a convenient and affordable licensing procedure (R$400.00) that can be granted directly to the municipalities. The action was partly in response to an independent, low-bandwidth network (64Kbps) built by the remote community of Sud Mennucci in northwest São Paulo State. A representative from the town spoke beside Anatel on a regulatory session at the event: "Anatel came to our town. They came, they saw, and left because there was nothing they could do." In another important development at the national level, a week before the event, the purse strings of Brazil’s National Telecommunications Fund (FUST), which has accumulated 4 billion reais (US$1.7 billion) since the late 1990s in telecom operator contributions, finally began to loosen, with funding providing for an accessibility project for the hearing impaired. At the event, W2i further registered heightened support and interest on the part of: - the Brazilian Association of Enterprise and Research (ABEP) (see the panel "Jumpstarting Broadband-Wireless Infrastructure"),
- Brazil’s National Conference of Municipalities (CNM),
- PRODESP (PRODERJ’s sister organization in São Paulo State),
- Brazil’s Ministry of Telecommunications, and
- the State of São Paulo governor’s office, which has begun to focus on local-government process reengineering.
From 2002 to 2006, the State of São Paulo has invested almost R$6 billion for hardware, software and expansion of broadband access, said Sidney Beraldo, representing Governor José Serra at the Opening Session. “Today there are 13,000 links…and by the end of his term in 2010 [the governor] wants all city administrations to have broadband access. We want to enter into partnerships with the private sector and other organizations so we can quickly expand these initiatives.” The State of São Paulo is undertaking a first-ever effort to understand the processes involved in the government services performed by 700,000 state employees.
At the end of the conference, a show of hands revealed strong satisfaction with the meeting and a desire to repeat it in 2008, which, with the help of all stakeholders, W2i will be exploring. W2i believes the energies are converging—with the additional involvement of Nortel and Alcatel—into what could be a banner year for local-government broadband-wireless in 2008.
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Related Items:
• W2i Announces Program Agenda for Digital Cities Convention in São Paulo
• Brazil Govt: $289mn Broadband Tender in a Month
• Regulator to the Rescue? Brazil’s Pro Wi-Fi Rules for Cities
• Rio de Janeiro '06
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