Brazil is a beautiful land, full of bustling development. And even though, traditionally, Brazil is thought of as a land of dichotomy between the favelas (shanty towns) and the ultra-rich, increasingly it is being defined by its emerging middle class.
So when I was in Brazil, in the city of Curitiba and state of Paraná, for two weeks late last year, I asked this question: How does one of the most rapidly growing economies of the world, with one of the most Internet-savvy populations, get connected?
Because Brazil is not there yet, for the most part.
Walking through the many malls, you will quickly see that for 2,000 raeis (approximately 1,200 USD at current exchange rates), you could get a “new, top-of-the-line” laptop with Windows Vista, a 200GB hard drive, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, and an outdated 1.3-GHz dual core processor. A similar model in the US would sell for $250.
Brazilian taxes and tariffs, in general, are very high, and electronics can carry additional fees of more than 75 percent. The resulting high prices -- for outdated tech, no less -- cause Brazilians to look for friends and family returning from abroad to bring home quality products, particularly computer equipment and software.
In fact, many Brazilians make extra cash by going to Paraguay, a duty-free zone, and returning to resell these electronics in Brazil.
If one cannot afford a PC in Brazil, there are still school libraries and the ubiquitous “LAN houses.” As we passed through a small mountain farming town, with literally one paved road and horses being the most popular form of transport, the LAN house was the center of local activity. People of all ages relaxed in the sun with beers, having a good time while waiting for their turn to access the Internet. In a country that has always had a difficult time connecting one area to another, the Internet is clearly bringing people closer together in new and exciting ways.
The real boon to information-sharing in Brazil is cellphones. I have never seen more people “getting more bars” than I did in Brazil. I even noticed on several occasions where cell towers were built over favela houses. Residential cell towers are a rare sight in the US, seen only after extensive zoning battles.
The economic benefits of wireless connectivity to the favelas cannot be underestimated. Having a phone number to use as the face of a business is a tremendous boon. The majority of people in the favela are self-employed tradesmen, and previously, business relationships were formed by word of mouth. Telecom had little relevance then; now, it's making a positive difference.
But while connectivity is booming, the pricing model leaves much to be desired. Phone services are very expensive, and many people opt to pay by the minute, rather than signing up for a monthly plan. To call outside of your local area code and state is prohibitively expensive. Most mobile phone users use a phone card for those kinds of calls (pay phones accept only prepaid cards, to prevent crime). A 5-raeis phone card will get you a 2- to 3-minute out-of-state phone call. That equates to paying about $1 a minute!
One of the biggest reasons why people have mobile phones and bear the expense is security, they say. In a land where danger lurks in the shadows, the ability to reach out for help instantly can be a great comfort. A phone is also very useful for calling a taxi, if one is needed.
During my visit, no one I talked to seemed to care at all that the government would be installing tracking devices in all cars by the end of 2011. Since tracking devices are already in place in all transport trucks, no one seems to mind; the added security outweighs the privacy issues.
Brazil is simply used to this kind of monitoring. Automatic ticketing machines for fining speeding drivers, for example, have been in use for some time.
All in all, major strides are being made, and the pace of change is incredibly fast. Still, Brazil’s Web-based future is far from secure, given prohibitive PC costs, high service costs, and recent actions by the new government regarding the sharing of WiFi.
Nevertheless, keep your eye on the emerging tech-savvy middle class as it continues to grow, in spite of systemic weaknesses.
— Adam Williams works as a technology consultant dealing with medical, security, and LBS tech.
Well, the US can think that every other country is going to wait for them. But they will soon find out that countries will pass them by if they can. Brazil has the potential to become a top country, it has natural resources, people, $... i
I think it's a matter of time before they create the right mechanism to spend the fund for universal service / access projects. They have to realize the impact it will have on their economy, citizens and their future.
I completely agree that the Washington model cannot be replicated elsewhere, and there is a general congative disconnect with the notion that what worked here (in the US) will work elsewhere. The United States is very unquie geographically, with nice oceans for borders (mostly) and a vast fertile interior plain with lots of navigable rivers. An island nation would have different strengths and weaknesses. I've often argued this in economics circles with some success, but it's still the mainstream notion.
You used to be able to almost go from New York to LA on town based public transport (the trolleys went the whole way except for a 60 mile stretch in New York state). It's next to impossible to do the same thing today on Amtrak
I think there was a home-brew culture, but it has almost been priced out of existance in the US, the ROI is just not possible. It's generally more expensive to build your own (in time and money).
"Development Connections: Unveiling the Impact of New Information Technologies [Paperback] Inter-American Development Bank (Author), Alberto Chong (Author)" http://www.amazon.com/Development-Connections-Unveiling-Information-Technologies/dp/0230111947/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302673395&sr=8-1
Product Description
Development Connections takes stock of recent advances in what is broadly known as Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)—cell phones, computers, and related Internet applications, as well as software advances that aim at improving the welfare of societies by empowering them. It is a comparative look at Latin America and ICTs in relation to the rest of the world and other countries in the region and the trends for widespread use of ICTs. In turn, the authors seek to discover how information and telecommunication technologies affect both the public and private sectors of the region and how they can optimize ICT returns to society. Projects focus on the use of ICTs for education, health, finance, environment, and labor. ICT trends are crucial to policy makers and ICT development is critical to the future of the region.
[Review] 5.0 out of 5 stars Finally a good book on the impact of ICT!, April 6, 2011 By Maria Lourdes Gallardo - See all my reviews This review is from: Development Connections: Unveiling the Impact of New Information Technologies (Paperback) The case studies and results presented in this book really highlight the benefits that the absorption of ICT has brought to the population in Latin America and the Caribbean as a tool of economic development and inclusion. The book showcases some of the latest state of the art knowledge around ICT currently available. Highly recommended!!
You are correct about the "one-size fits all" assumption being complete twaddle! When I was in Papua New Guinea, instead of pressing a project forward using a mainframe (the smallest m/f I'd ever seen in my life!) I noted the entire country's only computing training was on desktops and proposed a re-design using a decentralised PC-based network (and their excellent and up-to-date nation-wide telecommunications system - see earlier).
Here's a game for you: rank these phases of the project (re-)proposal according to which took the longest and which the least amount of time:
a) securing the support and permission of the client government department, b) writing an Act of Parliament and seeing it passed by the national government, or c) gaining the agreement of my 'superiors' at the World Bank in Washington DC
I kept telling everyone that we needed "appropriate technology" not a "Washington solution". My local-collaborator put it better, and thereafter was very fond of saying "we need a DC-3 solution not the Concorde". NB The DC-3/AC-47/"Gooney bird"/"Dakota" or "Dak" was the back-bone of development and travel in that country - see previous mention of the lack of long-d roads. Whereas we hung the "Spirit of St Louis" inside at Lambert Field, and London's Heathrow parked a Concorde on a round-about/traffic-circle outside, Jackson Field in Port Moresby is decorated by a DC-3 memorial! (see also Berlin Airlift)
Coincidentally I was reading my local paper which discussed proposals to re-open/expand an old rail line to re-invigorate our local economy (and those further north). The linkage between rail-roads and development has been a classic story in many countries - see US before travelling to Brazil...
Perhaps there was more of a tradition of self-building/expanding/updating in many/most countries until such time as 'complete package' deals became common-place and competitively priced. These days it seldom seems feasible.
However, don't tell that to my junk-box! Whilst I must admit that I don't 'tinker' as much as I used-to, clients often use me as their "waste disposal executive" and the temptation is always to see if I can re-engineer a box and give it a second life - "we can rebuild [it] better than before...". Of course it helps that I use Linux and am thus not cajoled by MSFT (like so many of those aforementioned clients) into buying ever larger and faster hardware simply to run their latest iteration.
Another coincidence: have you seen that Facebook have released (some of) the details of how they specified and built their latest data center? Think it might interest you. Like Google they build their own facilities, claim green credentials, and spec their own systems installed therein. Unlike the big-G, FB have thrown-open their design to enable collaboration and criticism.
"We started a project at Facebook a little over a year ago with a pretty big goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost.
We decided to honor our hacker roots and challenge convention by custom designing and building our software, servers and data centers from the ground up.
The result is a data center full of vanity free servers which is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers1."
Did not know that about New Zeland! Quite interesting. Still I see some differences, in that computers really came to Brazil later.
But I reached out to some of my friends and it turns out there is a big tradition of building your machines from scratch! Something that seems to have almost died out in the States.
I think there is never one right answer, as factors on the ground always dictate reality. One of my major complaints with development theory is the notion that one size fits all.
In Brazil's case you should look at the history of the railroad. Battling moutain ranges and jungle it took them forever. Check out the Pantanal Express which by the way is an amazing journey though the rainforest.
Adam Williams' article is well-written and informative. Like most of the rest of Latin America, phone services and internet services are extremely high, while quality is generally low. Chile would be an excluded shining example, I believe.
I understood most of the technical terms, and Adam had me until the last line where he spoke of a middle class. I live in the US, and wasn't quite sure what that meant. As you say, expanding commerce beyond the village is important, and in Latin America, Brazil has done that better than anyone down south. Keep it up!
where you have hit the nail on the head is "communications". Many people (in the 'western world') think of the needs for 'development' as food and (clean) water - which is true. However once people start to trade, 'communications' becomes key. This is not merely a road or rail network (or ship, or...) which has also been a traditional 'development role'. Nor is it other aspects of infrastructure, eg dams and power stations. Although all these become necessary - the nature of infrastructure is that all components must exist and in balance!
A key aspect which has been ignored by many aid agencies and development banks has been that trade requires inter-personal communications. Even in a village environment, people gather at markets (even on a traditional "market day") because they can only buy or sell if they can talk with the other party and agree price, quantity, quality, color, size, ...
If we want to expand trade, we need to expand the market beyond the village (assuming local market-size and volume/availability of supply to be issues). Accordingly a telephone network (superimpose TCP/IP should you wish) is an extremely valuable infrastructure. Two examples of this: Sri Lanka (with the Arthur C Clarke influence?) installing solar powered village phones running into a satellite telephone system; and Papua New Guinea which is the stereotype of a developing country with as-yet/still no road to connect north to south or east to west, regardless of its islands. Both enabled wider trade through (voice) communications because 'suppliers' could establish that a market (or even a customer) existed beyond their vision/walking range, and pre-agree a price (thus knowing that the transport costs to 'export' were feasible), etc. Payment by distance also becomes possible - and enables trust in the process!!!
Compare this with (say) India, which is currently overhauling its communications infrastructure nation-wide. Thirty years ago it was (or would have been) quicker for me to jump on a Bajaj (Vespa-like) scooter and ride ten minutes to a near-by town, than to spend even more time attempting to get through to someone on their phone - plus we didn't have individual/office phones so there was the hassle of physically being called to (or going to) the phone, at each end (and this even though Indian roads take driving to a whole different level for Mario and his brothers).
It was only a few years ago that the World Bank (which prides itself on its 'contribution' to world development) recognised the importance of 'communications' (and later computers, and even later data-comms...). There are some fascinating (well, to me at least) papers on the subject - but they don't 'appear' excepting within their rather specialised arena (so, sorry, no link/pointers).
As others have observed, this phenomenon/problem with communications technology is not limited to developing countries. We still see problems with communications and such paradigms in even the 'best' communities. For example, do I (in a country area) incur higher costs to phone my neighbor (via a relatively distant telephone exchange - which happens to be on the end of a microwave link which implies that the call will occupy two of those (limited number of) channels!) or to phone you (right across the Pacific from SW to NE)? The cost of the excited electrons is close to equal, even if the latency is not. The cost of installing the "last mile" of cable is far higher, per capita, even than installing fiber optic cable each of all those miles (across and) under the ocean! So why are the per-minute rates different? This is legacy!
Incumbent telcos use a financial model which expects pay-back within 12-18 months, but income to span twenty-to-thirty years (eg British Telecom). "Gravy"! This on its own is a block to innovation (and entrepreneuralism), and the best argument against Ma Bell-style monopoly - including the oligopolistic business practices that see much of the States carved-up between the remaining/emergent incumbents so that they are effectively local-monopolies - with all the attendant disadvantages (for the consumer/user).
Both Australia and New Zealand have (not all together similar or dissimilar) 'next generation' 'high-speed' broadband infrastructure projects. In both cases, the running sore is the public-private partnership and where to place the interface between public service and universality (especially facilities for rural areas - see also your correspondent's example of Maine, etc); and the interests of profit. New Zealand's answer is to regulate a monopoly during the pay-back period. The 'defense' for consumers is that the government will also monitor (not regulate or "set") the (new, local) incumbents' prices. Sadly this also effectively determines that there will be NO new development or technical advances during this period - how could there be any (commercial) motivation to improve in any way!? Isn't that what brought the community to the point of deciding it needed to impose from the government level, a 'next generation service' in the first place? Since when has 'this innovation' meant the last-ever improvement that will be(come) possible? Should government policy legislate a profit to a private organisation???
Few of us live in the 'wired societies' of S.Korea or Scandinavia but we regularly point envious fingers in their direction (excepting that our incumbents dislike, even fear, their financial/regulatory models!!!) This also explains your observation of why some societies flirt with the idea that communications is part of the 'common good' (if not a societal need) and should therefore be (in essence) a government/federalised function, cf an operation that can (safely and reliably) put in the hands of private enterprise. Sadly, it is easy to point to examples of both which characterise 'neglect', so there is no single right/wrong answer. Also, like healthcare, it is v.difficult for Americans to understand the social models (cf capitalist/materialist) employed elsewhere - not helped by industry lobbyists...
Given a bit of time, it is also easy to point to today's 'greatest thing since sliced-bread', that later became ho-hum and pedestrian if not downright outmoded (a reality too many telcos continue to resist admitting, even as the world moves to digital, IP, LTE...). Is there/can there be one, right, answer?
It's funny how travel opens your eyes to the sameness and differences between places. Here we are used to the 'newest and best', well, some of us, anyway. And we are always amazed at how little other countries have, how much they have to pay for it and how much they do with it. I've never understood that. Is it American arrogance that makes us that way?
Kudos to the ingenuity of those that don't have the access and opportunities that we have here in the U.S.
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