Internet no Brasil

01 JUL 1996

Autor: Carlos Alberto Afonso

Abstract

The Internet in Brazil is experiencing explosive growth. Spawned by a newsmedia-driven public interest which began in early 1994, this growth has taken unique paths. In a country where the entire data communications and telephone services infrastructure is under a state monopoly, Internet services to final users are scattered through hundreds of private providers of all sizes, while internet backbones operated by transnational companiesare being installed to compete with a state-funded backbone and a state-owned backbone. This article describes nongovernmental networking activity and how it evolved from a purely academic network to one serving a much larger public.

The Internet and the Community in Brazil: Background, Issues, and Options

Carlos Alberto Afonso, IBASE

The Internet in Brazil is experiencing explosive growth. Spawned by the newsmedia-driven public interest which began in early 1994, this growth has taken unique pathways compared to that in other Latin American countries. Although the absolute and relative numbers are still very small compared to the United States and Canada, Brazil already leads other Latin American countries in numbers of users (estimated at nearly 200,000 in March 1996) and hosts. The table below illustrates the growth rate of Brazilian Internet hosts in the first three months of 1996 (Table 1).

In a country where the entire data communications and telephone services infrastructure is under a state monopoly (TELEBRAS), Internet services to final users are scattered through hundreds of private providers of all sizes, while Internet backbones operated by transnational companies such as IBM and Unisys are being installed to compete with a statefunded backbone (Internet Brasil) and a state-owned one (EMBRATEL Internet service). How broad (and cheap) will Internet availability be to Brazilian citizens? This article describes a nongovernmental networking activity and how it evolved from a purely academic network to one serving a much larger public.

Month	Jan.96	Feb.96	Mar.96
Number of hosts	17,429	25,960	28,473
Source: FAPESP, Sao Paulo (FAPESP is Sao Paulo´s state govenment researsh-funding organization responsible for allocating IP numbers and names in Brazil

Origins of the Alternex Network

Until 1994, the Internet in Brazil was restricted (with one exception) to academic initiatives which began at the end of the '80s and developed under the coordination of a national consortium called the National Research Network (RNP) in a process similar in several ways to the U.S. NSFNet program. Funded by the National Research Council (CNPq), a federal agency under the Ministry of Science and Technology, with support from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), RNP started the deployment of a national backbone, with the experimental phase initiated in 1990.

The exception has been an effort by an independent research and consultancy institute in Rio de Janeiro-the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (IBASE). Founded in 1981 as a pioneering initiative to democratize social and economic information during the military dictatorship, IBASE has also dedicated a lot of energy to find creative and low-cost ways to use microcomputer technology for information processing and exchange. In July 1989, it officially inaugurated AlterNex, an electronic information exchange service based on UNIX systems providing international e-mail and electronic conferencing services.

International message transfer was made possible partnership between IBASE and the Institute for Communications (IGC), a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to democratize computer networking which operates PeaceNet, ConflictNet, EcoNet and other community networks. Twice a day, one of IGC's UNIX machines Menlo Park, California, called AlterNex in Rio (international long distance phone call), and established a UNIX-I Copy Program (UUCP) connection in order to e batches of messages between both systems. The phone call originated in the United States because it was about four times cheaper than calling from Brazil.

IBASE, together with IGC and other institutions, is a founding member of an international partnership of organizations with similar objectives called the Association Progressive Communications (APC). Founded in May, 15 today includes nearly 20 members and dozens of small operators (these are usually small bulletin board Systems, or BBSs) in special partnerships which include limited subsidizing of costly international UUCP calls.

The mission of APC is to ensure that local, low-cost e-mail systems with international outreach can be made available in any country to the community of grass-roots group human rights and environmental organizations, labor unions, dwellers' associations, popular education institutions and other community groups, as well as individuals who principles of democracy and social justice of APC. These local systems are linked to their nearest foreign APC counterpart (nearness here is determined by the cost of international calls rather than geography), usually in the United States, or England to take advantage of the Internet services systems and lower costs of international UUCP calls.

Using UUCP and modern modem technology, . built a major independent, non-profit international which constitutes today the largest international space for information exchange among community organization covering more than 30,000 user organizations in nearly every try. In areas where the Internet is available, local APC systems (such as AlterNex) have also become full Internet vice providers.

Until 1992, AlterNex provided only e-mail connectivity the Internet. However, at the end of 1990 several environmental organizations approached IBASE to suggest the development of a major independent project of electronic communication to be made available at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED),which took place in Rio in June 1992. The objective was to provide access through APC was and Internet systems to the events of the conference to hundreds of NGOs that would not be able to come to Rio. IBASE prepared a detailed Internet project for UNCED and submitted it to the UNCED Secretariat. It was accepted and included as part of the general host country agreement between the government of Brazil and the United Nations for the conference. As a consequence AlterNex underwent a major upgrade, replacing its aging 386-based UNIX machines with a network of Sun SPARC stations specially donated by Sun Microsystems.

A close partnership between IBASE and the RNP was then established, and when UNCED started an array of local area networks of microcomputers in all official places of the conference, connected to AlterNex by leased lines and from there to the Internet by an international 64 kb/s link to the United States operated by RNP, was fully operational. This was a unique example of a partnership between the United Nations, an independent nongovernmental organization (IBASE) and an academic network (RNP) to provide international communication services for nongovernmental organizations at an official United Nations conference. The UNCED project also relied on voluntary collaboration of other APC systems.

Thus, the initiatives of IBASE and RNP have become closely associated since then, and AlterNex has become, since June, 1992, the first full Internet system in Brazil open to public access. For hundreds of Brazilian nongovernmental organizations and individuals, this means the privilege of access to a full array of Internet services at the lowest possible cost.

Also as a consequence of the UNCED project, APC was able to carry out similar networking projects in ensuing United Nations conferences, most notably the Human Rights Conference, Vienna, Austria, 1993; Population and Development Conference, Cairo, Egypt, 1994; the Social Summit, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1995; and Women and Development Conference, Beijing, Republic of China, 1995. As a result, in 1995 APC became a member of the United Nations's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

It is interesting to note the pattern of growth of AlterNex's user base between 1990 and 1996 (Table 2). Since AlterNex is a major UUCP hub for more than 130 bulletin board services (BBSs) in Brazil, the total number of users who have access to Internet services (in the case of BBS users, basically e-mail and newsgroups) through AlterNex goes well beyond 20,000.

User growth has accelerated since 1994 due to the "discovery" of the Internet by Brazilian newsmedia. As a result, AlterNex was put under a lot of pressure to accommodate additional demand, mainly of younger people of the upper middle class who are those, in a developing country such as Brazil, able to afford a personal computer.

	9/90	8/91	7/92	8/93	12/94	12/95	3/96
Paying	120	480	700	760	1280	5000	5500
Free	40	80	90	250	220	200	150
Total	160	560	800	1010	1500	5200	5700
Note: Current user base includes 4000 users in the Rio area, and about 500 users in Sao Paulo. Paying user accounts open during the period of the UNCED conference. "Paying" indicates user accounts which contribute to AlterNex by paying monthly usage frees. Free accounts are mostly for AlterNex, APC, and IBASE staff.

Leveraging the Network: The Building of Internet Brazil

In 1994, a decision was made by the Ministry of Science and Technology to support the full development of a large Internet backbone in Brazil as a public network for general use. In May 1995, the Internet Brazil Steering Committee (CGIB) was created jointly by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Communications (which controls the state monopoly of telecommunications, TELEBRAS). AlterNex, in the meantime, was a sort of test case of a general-use system which relied on the RNP for its Internet traffic.

In a related (and conflicting) development, at the end of 1994 EMBRATEL (the long distance monopoly of TELEBRAS) initiated an experimental Internet service, with the original aim of building a verticalized Internet services monopoly. This went against one of the principles defended by the CGIB: to develop an Internet backbone in which access would be equally ensured to all private Internet service becoming access providers to final users.

Thus, EMBRATEL was required to close its experimental service by December 1995 - but managed to extend this deadline on the grounds that no other providers were available, wich was obviosly untrue. Defying the above-men- sevice provider facilities. During 1995, EMBRATEL opened its own Intenet backbone to public use by Internet service providers, thus spawing dozens of providers, mostly in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Actually, EMBRATEL´s backbone relies mainly on its old packet-switching network, RENPAC, with leased links converging to a single operation center in Rio.

In another development, part of the academic community based in Rio, led by the state of Rio´s research funding organization (FAPERJ), argued that the RNP should remain an exclusively academic network, subject to state subsidies and providing free access to researchers, while Internet services to the general public should be left in the hands of TELEBRAS. This led to a split in the RNP development, in wich Rede Rio (the city of Rio´s network of academic institutions), operating Rio´s federally funded international link to the United States, dissociated itself instituonally from the RNP consortium. AlterNex was caught in the middle of this controversy, because it used the Rio system since it was not a strictly academic network and charged for its services. The situation escalated to the point that IBASE had to renounce its membership in Rede Rio, and AlterNex had to reroute its Internet traffic to Sao Paulo. Oddly enough, the international link from Sao Paulo is operated and funded by FAPESP (the Sao Paulo equivalent of FAPERJ).

A major issue of the controversy is whether portions of the Internet should be subsidized on the basis of the professional nature of its users or the type of aplications being run on the network. Rede Rio seems to think that Researchers should have free access to the Internet (i,e., with costs charged to all taxpayers) just because they are researchers, not because they are running network experiments that demand special characteristics wich would be jeopardized if trafic had to be shared with other users. Thus, no restrictions are specified regarding general use specified regarding general use of Internet services by Rede Rio researchers, who thus can be customers of Internet services (commercial or otherwise) for free just like any paying user of other networks.

Clearly, the approach for subsidizing Internet access and the RNP is working on the development of special applications' backbones, while the GCIB is planning a process of continuing redution of federal subsidy of the Internet Brazil backbone - wich should become self-supporting (based on frees for backbones usage charged to Internet service providers) in the next few years. On the other hand, a decree to establish criteria for reduced Internet leased line costs to educational and research purposes is being jointly drafted by the Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Communications, wich again raises the issue of proper use of subsidies depending on the nature of the applications versus that of the community receiving those benefits.

During 1995, the GCIB coordinate the implatation of largest Internet backbone in Brazil - the internet Brazil backbone, designed and operated by the RNP, with a 2 Mb/s link to the United States (from sao paulo, funded and operated by FAPESP) and nine interstate links at 2 Mb/s. In 1996, two more 2Mb/s links to the United States are being installed (in Rio and federal capital, Brasilia). Points of presence of the Internet Brazil backbone are being opened to Internet service providers as they are officially activated in several state capitals.

Initiatives for Democratizing Internet Acces

In general, the approach adopted by the RNP and consolidated with the creation of the GCIIB (where an IBASE representative sits as a member) continues to ensure that community initiatives such as AlterNex are supported. IBASE, together with several other nongovernmental organizations working with the GCIB Working Groups, are studying and seeking to implement several projects which would stimulate democratization of acess to the Internet. Among these are:

Strengthening national UUCP gateways to be used by small BBSs at lowest possible cost (currently, AlterNex is a UUCP gateway for more than 130 BBSs in Brazil), thus decentralizing basic e-mail services for local access at very low cost
Developing community access centers where users who cannot afford their own computer have an e-mail address on the Internet
Sponsoring special projects for physically handicapped people (such as a successful project of Internet user interfaces for the blind being developed by university researchers in Sao Paulo and Rio)
Making available technical expertise for community organizations which plan to develop local access and information services, freenets, and so on
Training and supporting organizations to develop their public information services using WWW and electronic conferencing technologies
Developing special a "intranet" applications using Internet technology for making the work of non-profit organizations more effective In a country where owning a home computer is the privilege of a small percentage of families, not to speak of having a phone line at home, initiatives such as these might help to effectively democratize access to basic network services.

Actually, funds might be available from a few sources (through special legislation such as Law 8248 and resources from multilateral agencies such as the World Bank), which reinforces the possibility of interesting developments in terms of model social networking projects in several fields in the next few years.

For Further Information

Further information on IBASE can be obtained at:
http://www.ibase.org.br

Details on the work of the the Internet Brazil Steering Committee are available at:
http://www.cg.org.br

Information on APC is available at:
http://www.apc.org

Biography

Carlos Alberto Afonso studied naval engineering at the University of Sao Paulo and holds a Master´s degree in economics from York University (Toronto, Canada), where he is a co-founder and current technical director of IBASE, and a member of Internet Brazil Steering Committee.

IEEE Communications Magazine - July 1996