Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Despite promises, Wi-Fi grows only 1% in 10 months in Brazil



Despite promises of telecom providers, Wi-Fi goes down in Brazil and is little used for the provision of services to consumers. Officially, only 54 were installed new Wi-Fi hotspots in Brazil between January and October this year, according compiled by the portal Teleco.
Most of them - 32 - the state of São Paulo. Brazil has only 4051 hotspots activated. In the UK, where London will host the 2012 Olympics, the growth of Wi-Fi topped 600%.
In December 2010, Brazil had 3,997 hotspots installed, with St. Paul in 2455 accounting for most hotspots. In October, the state remains the most infrastructure has wi-fi, but counts only 2487 hotspots. Second is the Rio de Janeiro, but also the growth was poor - only nine new hotspots in the year - from 454 to 463.
In Brasilia, although the projects announced by Governor Agnelo Queiroz to use Wi-Fi to create a digital city, there was no expansion. The capital remained the same ACCOUNTING 151 hotspots in December 2010. In total, according to the study of Teleco, Brazil has 4,051 hotspots installed. This represents only 0.5% of the world - 679,821.
The curiosity of the survey, made from the site data JiWire is the expansion of Wi-Fi in the UK - where London will host the 2012 Olympics. In December 2010, were 26,156 hotspots. In October, that number jumped more than 600% and reached 181,153.
Where there was also a significant increase was in South Korea, a country already connected by a modern broadband infrastructure. There, in December 2010 were 26,885 hotspots in October, that number jumped to 83,689. In relation to the BRIC countries, Brazil is 'thrashing'. In Russia, there are 16,678 hotspots activated. In China, 109,488.

The ICT services have been the lever of GDP in Brazil

he 0.8% growth in the services sector was the main driver for the increase of 0.8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the sum of all goods and services produced in the country, in the second quarter of this year in the previous quarter. The main highlights were the sector of information services (1.9%) and financial intermediation and insurance (1.6%). The trade grew by 1.1% in the period.
According to figures released on 02/08, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the services were also highlighted in the comparison with the second quarter of 2010 as they grew by 3.4% . Information services, an increase of 5.5%, and trade, up 4.9%, were the main activities in this comparison.
"We've been observing for some time the big boom in this sector, which does not suffer so much turbulence," stated the manager of the coordination of national accounts of the IBGE, Rebeca Palis, remembering that in the second quarter growth of information services was pulled for mobile telephony, while other segments such as software, also have made progress.
The industry had a more moderate growth of 0.2% in the second quarter. The growth of this segment was driven mainly by mining and quarrying, which grew by 2.2% in the period. The production and distribution of electricity, gas and water was also increased (1.5%). Since construction had a lower growth of 0.5%, and the processing industry was stable over the first quarter. In comparison with the second quarter of 2010, the industry had a more significant increase (1.7%), with emphasis on the production and distribution of electricity, gas and water (3.4%).
The highlight of negative GDP quarter was the sector of agriculture, which fell by 0.1% compared to first quarter of this year and was stable in the second quarter of 2010. The GDP grew by 3.1% compared to the second quarter of this year with the same period last year, 3.6% in the year and 4.7% in the last 12 months.
IBGE also announced the revision of GDP figures from the second (from 1.6% to 1.8%) and fourth quarters of 2010 (from 0.8% to 0.7%) and the first quarter of this year (from 1.3% to 1.2%)

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

4G Americas any general decision on the 700 MHz band in Latin America

4G Americas, representing telcos and equipment manufacturers interested in exploring operations in LTE, made this Tuesday, 22/11, a defense of the allocationfor this service, the digital dividend - that is, the range of 700 MHz to be "released" with the migration to digital TV.

"In the U.S., where the 700 MHz are already used in LTE, there are 3 million subscribers, which gives this age range," argued the head of 4G Americas for Latin America and the Caribbean, Erasmo Rojas. The organization deplored the "delay" of various countries in the region to complete the "analogical blackout" - the end of the migration to digital TV - and called for "urgent action" to "secure the necessary spectrum."

Although not directly mention Brazil, which has repeatedly postponing any decisionabout using the 700 MHz band, 4G Americas advocated the establishment of a"supranational body" to deal with the harmonization of frequencies in the region.

Along these lines, also called the end of the spectrum by company limits andeliminating the use of unlicensed frequencies - except in bands above 5 GHz and, interestingly, argued that the increased concentration in the sector is beneficial.

"There may be cost savings with efficiency gains and scale," argued the consultantJose Otero of Signals Telecom. "The ideal is that Latin America harmonize the use of the 700 MHz band with the United States," Rojas amended. The defense ofspectrum harmonization in the region had already been made ​​by Qualcomm in the press conference held last week