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Internet
no Brasil
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
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Jan.96
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Feb.96
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Mar.96
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Number of hosts
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17,429
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25,960
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28,473
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Source:
FAPESP, Sao Paulo (FAPESP is Sao Paulo´s state
govenment researsh-funding organization
responsible for allocating IP numbers and names
in Brazil
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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.
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9/90
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8/91
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7/92
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8/93
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12/94
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12/95
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3/96
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Paying
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120
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480
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700
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760
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1280
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5000
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5500
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Free
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40
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80
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90
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250
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220
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200
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150
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Total
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160
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560
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800
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1010
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1500
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5200
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5700
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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.
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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.cgi.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
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