It is an honour for me, as Minister for Communications of Brazil, before such a qualified audience to outline part of the Brazilian view about the future in communications and all of our digital economy.
This honour is made greater by the fact that we are here debating upon the competent work done by the European Union, which resulted in the Digital Agenda. This is an instrument capable of foreseeing and guiding development not only in the economic sectors – but also of our own social relations – in view of a horizon stretching toward 2020.
The concept of a European Digital Agenda was made possible thanks to the attention given by Community institutions many years already, to subjects related to electronic communication. Ever since the Directive on Television without Frontiers, back in the nineties’, and up until a series of Directives on Telecommunication and Audiovisual Media Services, European legislators had started formulating and implementing innovative and creative regulatory solutions. These are solutions which have managed to stay up-to-date, while faced with rapid technological and economic changes in the digital world.
We Brazilians have always given advances in Europe our attention – whether they be regulatory innovations or conceiving agendas such as this one, the subject of today’s debate.
We share a common regard for an urgent need to keep a global view on the future of communications. Our challenges however are completely different, as are our opportunities. The solutions which we have come up with for Brazil vary even more widely.
Our physical and social geographical position cannot be compared with European reality. Our area of eight million and five-hundred thousand square kilometres is almost double that of the European Union. Our population of 190 million inhabitants is larger than that of the two most populated countries of Europe, namely Germany and the United Kingdom.
Brazilian dimensions pose a challenge in relation to communications. Linking up between our country’s regions – each marked by profound economic and social variations – requires an immense infrastructure, as well as technological and regulatory solutions which differ from those needed by Europe. Furthermore, Brazil set up its communication systems much more recently – and we are still suffering from major inequality of access. That explains how come that until 2009 for instance, more than half of the people of Brazil never enjoyed access to Internet.
Our challenges however are no greater than our potential and our dynamism. The world is going through a profound realignment. Since the start of the international financial crisis in 2008, developing countries have asserted themselves as a significant frontier towards sustainable economic development. Their economic horizon is now proving a lot more stable and promising than that of economies which traditionally had been leaders in world growth.
When the crisis started, Brazil had already recovered its macroeconomic stability and its capacity to invest in major infrastructural work and manage large-scale employment. Our country had already initiated a broad-scale process of reducing income inequality. At the time we had a robust, red-hot consumer market, and this market is continuously growing.
In truth, the crisis of 2008 found Brazil to be a strong country, with a series of structural ongoing projects. These projects include exploitation of gigantic petrochemical resources from the Pre-Salt layer and the development of a complete industrial production chain associated to it; powerful investments in transport and urban infrastructure; accelerated growth of a clean, renewable energy matrix, made sustainable by hydroelectric and bio-combustion power generation; as well as by making our industry more competitive and innovative.
Inducing development is also apparent in our projects relating to the digital world. Our public authority is a reference per se in the use of information technology. Public companies and government agencies in Brazil rely on millions of One-Stop Services, often based on free software, developed in Brazil with open standards, and connected to networks with continental dimensions.
We are capable of confronting huge challenges. In a period of just under three years, we were able to instal computers with broadband connections in all of our 58 million public inner-city schools.
We were one of the first countries in the world to adopt wholly computerized electoral processes. At the most recent poll, with more than 135 million voters, results were passed through the computer and processed, only a few hours subsequent to closure.
We use this technology above all as a democratic tool, to help our citizens attain their rights. This was the subject of a recent speech by President Delma Rousseff, who is to appear in Brussels tomorrow.
In New York, during the launch of a partnership for open government, our president reminded us of the innovative use of digital cooperative platforms used to work out draft legislation. She stated that our next step would be to open up and put at people’s disposal government data, allowing them to be used for various analyses and data cross-referencing.
It is noteworthy that in Brazil a growing number of citizens use computer technology and communication.
In the last quarter, we became the third largest world market in the sale of personal computers – just after China and the United States.
Between June 2010 and June 2011, we recorded no less than 12 million and 200 thousand new mobile access points to Internet.
During the same period, a number of fixed internet broadband connections grew to 2 million and 800 thousand units.
Already the pay TV market grew to 2 million and 600 thousand subscriptions.
In the first quarter of 2011 alone, billing in the telecommunications sector, including industry and services, attained 100 billion R$ and 700 million Brazilian reais (44 billion Euros). This shows that we will certainly be reaching a new record this year, overstepping last year’s billing of 185 R$ Brazilian reais (79,35 billion Euros).
On the other hand, we would like to promote an ever broader sector, especially in view of cheapening the cost of services – as yet well above the world average – and make it possible for these to become attainable throughout our country’s regions. In this sense, we have established some goals for the year 2015, in line with the Federal Government’s Multiannual Plan:
- the number of households with access to Internet will be more than doubling, going from 17 million and 400 thousand, to 40 million;
- a similar growth will be seen in subscription TV: it will exist in 32 per cent of households, as opposed to the current 18 per cent;
- 70 per cent of the population will be using Internet, as opposed to 41,7 per cent signalled according to a 2009 opinion poll;
- every mobile phone user will be using 190 minutes calling time, increasing the current average by 75 per cent;
- every public school in Brazil will own broadband internet. This is currently only accessible in schools in inner-city areas;
- the national market for telecommunications equipment and apparatus will take up 70 per cent of national production.
All of these goals are based on a solid foundation of plans and measures: the National Broadband Programme, PNBL, including anything from regulatory and fiscal measures, down to public infrastructural investments.
The programme has already allowed the state enterprise Telebrás to be reactivated, and for a national backbone to be set up, 30 thousand kilometres in length, acting in partnership with private operators of all sizes.
By the same token, the PNBL have already made it possible for an agreement to be signed with telecommunications dealers, offering broadband access all over Brazil at popular prices – 35 R$ Brazilian reais ( 14 Euros), half of the average price recorded at the start of 2011.
Among many other current activities, we shall during the next few weeks, be reducing the taxes on construction, modernization and expansion of high-capacity grids. In this way, we anticipate in the next few years, to invest 20 billion R$ Brazilian reais (8,1 million Euros).
We are leapfrogging in terms of expanding our infrastructure. Until April 2012, we shall be promoting and auctioning the 2.5 Gigahertz frequency band. Through this, we will make it possible, even before the 2013 Confederations Cup, for Brazil to rely on fully- functional, fourth-generation mobile services. Quite soon, too, we shall be bidding for a 450 megahertz band, turned towards communication in rural areas – and also a 3.5 Gigahertz band.
These auctioning efforts can be seen as great opportunities for investment; and as growth catalysts for our infrastructure. For this very reason, the Federal Government will be adopting as its principal criterion for competition, not so much the amount paid for a given band, but instead the investment projects for networks and services offered to the end user. Our constant aim is to enable the expansion and broad access of broadband and cordless phone.
Another important market which will be growing continuously and vigorously, is subscription television. Our Parliament approved three weeks ago, a legislation unifying regulations applying to different services, such as cable TV, MMDS and DTH. This legislation also gives companies in the telecommunications sector more freedom to invest in the sector. It also enables the government to simplify the process of granting licences.
Thanks to the new legislation, many cities uncovered until now, will be counting on local television operators for subscription television; as well as offers of triple-play packs, with joint broadband, telephony and television at accessible prices, which will be growing quickly in all of our country’s regions.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Overcoming our infrastructure’s deficit, so it can deal with the long economic development cycle initiated by Brazil, is a necessary condition though not sufficient, towards consolidating our country’s digital economy. That is why we are making great strides in setting up a framework of standards in administration, which should enable us to fully exploit this new era’s potential.
We are updating our sector’s legislation, in order to expand our communication services within Brazil. This same legislation, which recently unified our subscription television services, is paving the way towards a “layered regulation” in the electronic communications sector – in other words, managing matters relating to the audiovisual content independently from the technology employed in transport.
Furthermore, it has for the first time in our country instituted something which is already well-known in European community legislation: bond placement and minimal percentages in national production, and independent production, which will be used as true inducers of our creative industry.
In September too, the Federal Executive submitted the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet to be approved by Parliament which, if approved, will be one of the world’s most progressive legislations regarding subjects such as Internet governance and privacy online. It protects users and defines connexion and access duties inherent to employment contracts, aside from initiating a debate on the network’s neutrality.
Up until the end of this month, we will be setting up rules on the quality offered by broadband. We would like users to know precisely the parametres for speed and access of the services they have signed up to. Above all, we wish to establish criteria enabling namely our connexion speed to reach higher levels.
We are equally working on a proposal towards a new regulatory framework for electronic communication on a global scale.
In Brazil, radio and television standards are still based on a legislation which by August next year, will be half a century old. This legislation does not interact with social and individual rights as approved under the Federal Constitution of 1988, nor with legislation on telecommunications set up during the nineties.
We would like to overcome this dichotomy and create a focused legal framework, ensuring full freedom of expression; promote the diversity and multiplicity of our people and our culture; render more democratic our access to communications and guarantee fully competitive and innovating conditions.
All of these changes to our infrastructure, use of technology and legal framework form part of a much larger process currently underway.
Based on such digital data, we need to select those goals which serve the interests of the citizens of Brazil and their democracy, promotes their sovereign rights and economic development, by reducing inequality. Our networks, instruments and content are key to this, as are education and training, distribution and export, regional economic development, research and innovation. In the long term, this will become possible too, through a long-term sustainable industrial policy.
This is the objective of the digital agenda we would like to have for Brazil. We are making an effort not only towards joining forces, but also consolidating them with a view to setting up a comprehensive and structurally sound programme, which should serve as a guiding light towards developing our country in the next decades to come.
Many thanks.
Endereço: Esplanada dos Ministérios, Bloco R
CEP: 70044-900 – Brasília-DF
Telefone: 61 3311-6000
