The Broadband Internet Access *

The Internet is one of the technologies that most people cling after the cell phones. However, less than 50% of the population in Brazil can afford the privilege to have high speed Internet at home, or even to have Internet access, mainly because of the lack of investments in infrastructure and because of the high taxes. Even so, year after year the number of people having the broadband Internet access is increasing, not as fast as other countries, but the government already has signaled its concern about having a plan of investment for the next years.

The reason of the investment is because Brazil has one of the highest prices of broadband Internet in the world, creating a huge barrier for the most disadvantaged people to access the Internet. Nevertheless, over 60% of the population has contracted less than 1 Mbps (Megabit per second) speed, which makes the service one of the lowest Internet speeds comparing to other countries where the average speed reaches 10 Mbps to 60 Mbps, like Japan. Recently, the USA and Australia have announced an investment plan to have an average speed of 100 Mbps access.

Due to the difficulty in providing broadband service in all Brazilian cities, with low cost, especially for low-income families, the government is considering an investment plan called National Broadband Plan to be announced soon, providing the use of existing fiber networks with the state’s participation in the implementation of policies that achieve the goal of mass broadband, either through a state-owned operator, or through subsidies to private enterprises. The government also argues about the need or not of government intervention to democratize Internet access in Brazil. As one of the possibilities of the plan is the reactivation of Telebrás, state agency established in 1972 responsible for standardizing and modernizing the telephone services in the country.

A World Bank study analyzed the influence of expansion of the Internet in 120 countries and concluded that each 10% of improvement in broadband services automatically generated a 1.3% increase in economic growth of a nation. From this study, we can note such importance of the National Broadband Plan for the country and how much Brazil still has to expand in the next years.


* Article published on Curitiba in English.