@ LTE LatAm: Demand for 4G grows in Brazil, but common hurdles stand in the way

RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazil’s major wireless providers are sharing the burden of building the backbone of a national network before the country hosts international sporting events in 2014 and 2016. But serious hurdles remain for any telecommunications provider in Brazil having to deal with the country’s bureaucracy and poor infrastructure, according to speakers at Informa’s LTE Latin America conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Brazil’s major phone operators had recently projected the necessity of building a national backbone for 3G service that linked the capital cities of all 27 states before the country hosts the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. That backbone is now in construction, with 22,700 km of optic fiber being laid by a handful of providers working together.
“Technology at its core is always simply a means (for the user) to do something,” said Leonardo Capdeville, planning and technology director for Vivo Brasil. “So I think the operator has to find out which is the best technology possible.”
Vivo, Brazil’s leader for 3G customers last year with more than 50% of the nation’s users, has contributed 34% of that fiber line. In June 2010, Vivo kicked off a campaign to spread its 3G network to 2,832 Brazilian cities by the end of 2011, roughly 85% of the country. After starting with 606 municipalities, as of this month Vivo is up to 1,335 markets with full 3G coverage.
But Vivo and other wireless providers in Brazil face challenges expanding their networks on a timely basis, due mainly to Brazil’s infamously suffocating bureaucracy. Getting the necessary environmental permits has proven an especially difficult step in Brazil’s northern states that lie in and around the Amazon.
“We have the demand from society, companies have found the investment, but there’s a slowness to environmental permits,” Capdeville said. “It’s a (discussion) we must have in Brazil, because this has to be faster. If we have investment available, we have to try and implement it as quickly as possible.”