Brazil Seeks Foreign Input for Federal Internet Plan

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology (MCIT) for Brazil, Gilberto Kassab, is in Barcelona, Spain this week to participate this in the Mobile World Congress.

Along with other members of his ministry, Kassab is expected to conduct a consultation with foreign participants as to suggestions to integrate Brazil’s National Internet das Coisas (IoT, or Internet of Things) plan, to be launched in September.

“Don’t we want to attract investment? Is not it important for us to form partnerships so that Brazil can develop services for the world? We need to hear (foreigners) if we want to attract investment and generate economic development opportunities for Brazil,” MCIT’s IT Secretary, Maximiliano Martinhão, told Globo’s G1 web portal.

Preliminary data from an analysis shows that IoT will generate between US$4 trillion and US$11 trillion in 2025. “We imagine that a part of this is the Brazilian local market,” says the secretary. “But we need to have a strategy that takes into account our reality. We have to identify our vocation and the strategic sectors for Brazil.”

Last week, Minister Kassab wrote an article in which he reiterates the importance of the World Wide Web to Brazilians. ‘Across the country, from the big metropolis to the smallest rural districts, the Brazilian citizen demands access to the network as a construction of his life in different dimensions.”

Continuing, ‘And the service that today is provided by more than five thousand companies granted by the National Telecommunications Agency, is very present element in the daily life of the people,’ said a part of Kassab’s article.

According to the MCIT during his visit to the Congress Kassab hopes to start to obtain ‘cooperation between governments and operators to ensure a safer digital environment, with privacy and protection of consumers and services, without undermining the growth of the mobile ecosystem in Latin America’.

Officials say that the strategic partnership between Brazil and the European Commission in the technology sector completes ten years in 2017, and has already led to a project that calls for fiber optic cables to be placed across the Atlantic Ocean, linking South America and Europe.