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.