Summary:A
new digital inclusion roadmap will be launched in the first half of 2015;
government wants to create advantages for private companies to invest more
A revamped
national broadband plan will be launched in the first half of 2015 with more
government investment and the creation of "synergies" between the
public and private sector to deliver improved Internet access services across
the country.
The promise
was made by the new Communications minister of president Dilma Rousseff's
second term, Ricardo Berzoini. The minister told delegates at a public sector
telecoms event that his team is currently working on a new plan to deliver
quality broadband to the maximum amount of citizens at a lower cost and faster
speeds.
According to
Berzoini, the intention is to "create an environment where companies can
invest larger sums of money and get medium and long-term paybacks." The
new minister added that the government "will invest a large amount, given
the need to increase the country's telecom infrastructure." This was one of president Rousseff's pledges during her
presidential campaign last October.
"We
want to present something that the country will see as a real goal to be
achieved within the next four years," the minister said. According to
Berzoini, there are budgetary constraints, but the idea is to prioritize more
strategic areas for improvement, without citing specifics.
The new Communications
minister stressed that the new plan will maintain previous projects, such as the development of Brazil's first satellite - which
aims to protect priviledged information that may impact on national security
while boosting the broadband capacity of the country - and expand on original
digital inclusion targets.
Berzoini did
not give an indication of what the new targets might be, but the Rousseff
government has failed to meet its existing goals in terms of digital inclusion:
official numbers indicate that 2014 ended with 23 million households connected
to the Internet, well below the originally intended 35 million.
When it comes to quality of services, Internet speed in Brazil
generally lags behind rest of the world. According to a study carried
out by Akamai last year, global average broadband speed has gone up by 21
percent in the second quarter of 2014, while average Internet speed in Brazil
has gone up by 11 percent.