Brazil internet plans dwarfed by South Korea

Brazilian Communications minister Paulo Bernardo will travel to the World Information and Communications Summit (WICS 2011) show in Seoul, South Korea next week. As he presses the flesh, what message is he taking to Asia?

Bernardo has stated that he wants to follow the Korean example, “to cut corners” and get to a new era of broadband infrastructure in Brazil. South Korea has long developed a reputation for leading the world in Internet speeds, with consumer expectations far exceeding what those in even the EU and US are used to.

The minister has a long road ahead. Though Brazil is powering up the world economic rankings, the access to broadband in this country is frankly quite pitiful. The middle-class are fleeced by telecoms operators who are able to charge many times more than broadband costs in the US and Europe, and the poor have limited access – if any.

Last month, president Dilma told minister Bernardo to stop talking in kilobits and to start thinking in megs, a reference to the fact that some telecoms operators still sell sub-1Mb Intenet packages as “broadband” in Brazil. The same telecoms operators only recently stopped selling two cups and a piece of string as a landline solution.

The minister should actually be thinking far ahead of these pathetic ambitions. He is visiting South Korea next week, a country that is already making 1Gb Internet available to the public from next year. That’s next year minister Bernardo! And you are still talking of 1Mb as a target?

For the less mathematically-minded reader, let me emphasise that the ambition of Brazil is one thousandth of the reality in South Korea.

South Korea is a good place for Brazil to be studying. It’s one of the nations that boomed after World War II – with economic growth averaging 8% or more, during the period of 1962 to 1989. In a few decades, the nation went from being dirt-poor to being a trillion-dollar industrial power, now hovering just outside the top-ten global economies.

But the analogy is not direct – South Korea does not have the domestic market, agriculture, or minerals of Brazil so they had to look overseas for growth. They have spent decades searching for the next wave to ride. Now that the internet underpins so much global business this difference in attitude is clear. They have already seen that connected citizens will not only email each other in future, they will socialise, conduct business, and create wealth for their country.

The future of business lies in greater connectivity and participation between global firms. The future of politics lies in greater connectivity and participation by citizens. The future of entertainment lies in greater connectivity and participation by consumers.

A government that sees the Internet as a ‘luxury’ in the twenty-first century has failed to see that this is the printing press of our generation. Brazil’s companies are booming already, but just imagine what they could do if the citizens of Brazil – however rich or poor – were all online and transacting with each other, and the world?

Does the minister need it to be spelled out any further?

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Photo by Alicia Nijdam licensed under Creative Commons