Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
tion, its major beneficiaries have been the operators. I believe that licensing services
like the Multimedia Communication Service (SCM) is a form of establishing quality
patterns without having to put all connection services under public regulation.
The concern here is that a national policy for effective universalization of broadband
services with no quotation marks — i.e., whose quality is adequate to the level of
the multimedia content services offered, and whose speed increases according to the
evolution of those services — must rely on entrepreneurship at the end of the line:
there must be local providers that, using various technical means, can serve the last
mile counting on a quality, reasonably priced transit connection. The requirement
for providing such services under public regimen can create other bureaucratic requirements
that hinder competition on that last mile. I do not propose to let the
“market” solve this — we have had hard lessons showing that the market does not
guarantee universalization. What I propose is that, if there is any regulation, it must
be flexible enough to permit local entrepreneurship — the kind of solution that
Europeans call lightweight regulation.
Our hope is that Plano Nacional de Banda Larga (PNBL, the Brazilian National
Broadband Plan) can make a decisive contribution to improve this situation,
by ensuring quality bandwidth to local providers at prices far better than those
arbitrarily practiced today by the regional telecommunications monopolies.
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