Graphene, the material of the future that is present

Known as the material of the future, the graphene keeps the scientific and technological community astonished because of its amazing properties and countless of potential applications. Adding to other compounds such as main raw material or as a new process of production, graphene will make possible touch screens that don't break down, internet 100 times faster than today with optical fiber, flexible transistors at 100 gigahertz, solar panels, purify seawater into drinking and in many other applicable areas and examples.

The properties of graphene are superlative: it is transparent, flexible, waterproof, hydrophobic (repels water), stronger and better heat conductor than diamond, capable of supporting a large electrical current density, thus having a higher conductivity than copper and even silicon. The resistance, malleability and ability to produce energy make graphene an element with transformative potential, with application in various sectors of the automotive, aerospace, biomedical, telecommunications, electronics, energy, components and sensors.

Actually the whole world is investing huge amount of money with research in industrial and electronic applications in graphene. Samsung already has 407 patents related to graphene and IBM almost with 150.

Today, 1 gram of graphene can cost between 100 and 300 dollars in the international market. However, 1 kg of graphite costs 1 dollar and from this amount it's possible to extract around 150 grams of graphene which would make possible to have at least 15.000 dollars of graphene. Of course it requires investments and material processing to reach this amount.

According to some specialists, the first applications are expected in 2016-2017 and from 2020 its advantages will be a bit more generalized. The time that the industry needs to incorporate a new material is estimated at 15 to 20 years and in some cases up to 50.

It will be the big companies in these sectors that will decide when and how to introduce these innovations to the market. The impact on quality of life, the environment and energy is invaluable. We will need decades to evaluate the success of this technology.

An interesting thing is that Brazil has one of the world's largest reserves of graphene and its applications increase daily. So investments will be important to lead us as one of the greatest producers not only in material but that develops products that generate patents, licenses and royalties.

How the 3G internet has changed the telecom companies' life

With the booming of smartphones and tablets in the last four/five years, the business model of telephony companies has been put against the wall. With the competition of applications that replace phone calls and text messages, the carriers are betting and investing more than ever on sales of data packet to the internet.

Today there are 273 million of active mobile phones in Brazil and 38% of this amount has access to the internet 3G - in 2009 this percentage didn’t exceed 2%. Access to mobile broadband also made popular applications to exchange messages and files such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber and a few others. Each time, users are more connected not only by 3G but also by Wifi hotspots, and then, users need less to fall back on SMS with more alternatives for phone calls and messages.

The change is not only in Brazil, but globally. A research by the British consulting Ovum says that the preference for applications makes telecom operators around the world stop profiting USD 33 billion per year with SMS. The prediction is that the next two years, the value of the annual loss will reach USD 54 billion. In 2012, the consulting company Informa affirms that the number of messages exchanged by apps for the first time surpassed the number of text messages sent via SMS - it was 19 billion messages per day compared to 17.9 billion.

With this scenario, it made the telecom companies had changed the strategic and charge less for the SMS, now selling by a pack of 100 or 500 SMSs, before that, charged by unit. Despite of being the voice service as the main service, the revenues coming from this vertical are dropping in some countries and in Brazil stopping growing. The telephone companies are now increasingly investing in landline and mobile broadband, which is where it is coming revenue growth.

Why the 3G in Brazil has problems?

Very often we hear people complaining about the 3G that is not working properly or the signal is not good enough for the basic operations. But what is the main cause of this problem that has been dragging for a long time?

Looking for the answer for this unsettled question we found a few possible reasons. First, the carriers were not prepared for the exponential growth in demand for data usage in mobile phones. According to the IDC Consultoria, the sales of smartphones and tablets last year (2013) have increased 142% and 122% respectively. There are a few reasons why those numbers are so big, although mainly driven by the lower prices and the trend of replacing devices less modern. So imagine all those mobile devices accessing 3G network in the same area.

This aspect raises the second reason why the 3G is slow. The carriers have not invested in infrastructure enough to support so many users in a dense area, there is no enough Base Transceiver Station (BTS) - also known as Cell Tower or Cell Site, that telecommunication towers we see spread around the city. The carrier AT&T alone has more BTS than the five largest Brazilian network operators together in a similar geographical area. Each BTS has capability for "X" number of users. Conforms the congestion increases, the range decreases to try to meet all nearby users - not always it is possible. This explains why one day the signal is optimal in a certain area and at another time it is impossible to use because many people are trying to connect at the same time. And it's not only to have the BTS spread around the city, it's required to have a good link between the cell tower and the backbones of the carrier, otherwise the information will be received by the antenna, but it will get stuck due to the poor link. The fourth generation (4G) will not help on this if the links are kept the same.

Brazil has about 64 thousand BTS across the country; half the number of BTS in Mexico, for example. Okay, why carriers just install more antennas? Simple, isn't it? Restrictive laws prohibit the installation of new antennas in many places. The green and yellow bureaucracy allows each city to create their own legislation about antenna installation - are currently more than 250 laws about the theme. There is a law stopped in the Congress that would regulate in a single law this matter. Today an authorization to install a BTS takes 12 to 18 months.

What's more, the biggest bottleneck of mobile broadband third generation - believe it is not between the smartphone and the antenna, but the infrastructure to carry this enormous amount of content consumed and exchanged daily. The data stream is much larger than the transmission capacity allows. Possibly not even the fourth generation (4G) will solve the problem, once this technology only changes the capacity between the smartphone and the cell site.

There are many knots that still need to be untied and the World Cup could be a great reason for this, but the legacy that it leaves us is not at all close to the minimum acceptable.

The Civil Rights Framework for the Internet

In April of 2014, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and Senate have approved the civil rights framework for the Internet (in Portuguese, Marco Civil da Internet), a project that is considered a Constitution of the worldwide web.

After being discussed and developed collaboratively in an open debate through a blog, in 2011 the Civil Marco was presented as a bill of law. Initially approved in the Chamber of Deputies on March 25, 2014, the draft law went to the federal senate, this approved on April 23, 2014 on the Senate floor. President Dilma Rousseff signed a law passed in the legislature on April 23, during NETmundial conference in São Paulo.

The text of the bill deals with topics such as network neutrality, privacy, data retention, the social function that the network will need to comply, especially to guarantee freedom of expression and the exchange of knowledge, besides imposing liability obligations to users and providers.

After weeks listening to discussions and critics about the Marco Civil, there are three main points pretty important and so far not regulated, putting now a specific regulation about this sensitive discussion that Brazilians always had to live with many frustrations and barriers due to the gap in current law. Let’s talk about those:

- Network neutrality (or Internet neutrality, or neutrality principle) means that all the information that travels over the network should be treated the same way, navigating at the same speed, or the speed of hiring. If we look the telecom’s perspective, it’s obvious that its better having a user navigating through the websites, checking emails, simple stuffs, instead of having users watching movies via streaming, using VOIP, file sharing and many other things that overload the network. With little (or poor) infrastructure, the telecom company could provide the service the lightweight user needs, but due to the heavy user, it requires more investment to attend all kinds of users. With this important topic very clear, no matter which user you are, you don’t need to worry if you’re going to pay more or less to do what you want on the web, just you use it.

- Keep the internet logs - requires that records users' connection should be retained by ISPs for a period of one year, under strict confidentiality and secure environment. This information relates only to the IP, date and start and end times of the connection. This action helps to identify who is responsible for any crime occurred on the web. The project also fixed privacy principles regarding the data that the user provides to providers. On the internet, the data are now collected, processed and sold almost instantly. The law gives users the right that their information cannot be used to a different to that were provided, as stated in the privacy policy of the service order.

- Removal of Content and responsibilities - The Marco Civil establishes the rule that content can only be taken down after a court order, and that the provider cannot be held responsible for offensive content posted by users on their service. With this, the project aims to prevent Internet censorship: to prove that content is offensive, this person shall have the right to adversarial in court.

Of course the Marco Civil is not only about that, it covers a total of 25 articles divided in 5 chapters, but personally speaking, this law will be good for everybody once anyone is a internet user!!