Community networks bring internet to the disconnected – 02/17/2024 – Tech

The ritual was repeated every morning. Carolina Ribeiro Defino, 35, woke up around 7 am and took a walk of around 300 meters. “As I had to climb the hill, it felt like walking 1 kilometer,” she jokes. In her hands, she carried her cell phone, searching for an internet signal.

Amidst the cows and chickens on the rural property next to his house, where an antenna was installed, he listened to messages from the day before, tried to call his family, a friend or a work contact. She was going down the hill. She would only be connected again the next day.

The imposing mountains that surround Monteiro Lobato (SP), a city of just over 4,000 inhabitants, about 130 kilometers from the capital of São Paulo — where the author of the characters of “Sítio do Picapau Amarelo” and Jeca Tatu, portrayed in “Urupês” lived “— they are a hindrance to cell phone signal.

Connection is not something simple to achieve amid irregular topography, where hills, valleys, trees and even clouds can disrupt the signal.

“At first, I thought it was good,” she says. “I lived in São Paulo for many years, I worked in a bank, it was a lot of rush, a lot of information. I really wanted to stay in the middle of the woods”, says Carolina, a graduate in economic sciences, who changed careers when she moved to Monteiro Lobato.

As a cultural producer, she only returned to São Paulo on weekends to work.

In 2018, however, Carolina realized that she was starting to lose some work contacts due to a lack of connection. At the same time, her husband, Tiago, wanted to take online courses and needed internet.

“We subscribed to a local provider, it was R$150 per month for the first six months, but then the monthly fee was R$300, very expensive. We only stayed with them for a year”, recalls Carolina.

In 2019, she learned that some people from the Souzas neighborhood, where she lived, about 7 kilometers from the center of Monteiro Lobato, had come together to create a community network that would provide access to residents. The cost was R$30 per month for maintenance.

“It has improved our lives a lot, we now have access to the internet at home at a low cost”, says she, now a teacher at the Pandavas Institute, in early childhood education and primary education.

During the pandemic, he managed to maintain contact with children and transmit some of the content online. Today, it has an internet provider for its cell phone and the signal from the community network.

In the 21st century, 29.4 million Brazilians do not have access to the internet, equivalent to 16% of the population aged 10 or over, according to the TIC Households 2023 study, prepared by CGI.br (Internet Steering Committee in Brazil).

The number is much lower than the 49% observed in 2015, but it remains significant.

The reasons are mainly economic: in 55% of homes without internet access, respondents point to the high cost as the main factor for the lack of connection.

As part of this population lives in areas that are difficult to access, large internet provider companies are not interested in installing infrastructure to meet reduced demand. At the same time, small local providers charge a lot to take the internet signal to regions far from the city.

The monthly fee of R$300 paid by Carolina, for example, is equivalent to more than 20% of the average earnings of Monteiro Lobato residents, around R$1,460 per month, according to IBGE.

“Community networks are there to serve residents who live in this limbo”, says Hiurê Camargo, creator of the community network Portal Sem Porteiras in the rural neighborhood of Souzas.

According to the definition of Anatel (National Telecommunications Agency), community networks are communication networks that are collectively owned and managed, non-profit and oriented towards community objectives.

After completing his doctorate in Physics at ITA (Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica), in São José dos Campos (SP), Hieurê Camargo moved to Monteiro Lobato in 2017. A resident of the Souzas neighborhood, he felt the difficulty of connection firsthand.

He already had experience with community networks. It found support in the APC (Association for the Progress of Communications), a network of civil society organizations and activists founded in 1990, based in South Africa. The objective is to train individuals, organizations and social movements to use information technologies.

In partnership with the Mexican Rhizomatica, APC has been helping community networks in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. In Brazil, the initiative has already supported the implementation of community networks such as Portal Sem Porteiras, which received around US$15 thousand (R$74.6 thousand) for its installation.

“But a community network requires resources to stay upright: it is necessary to carry out maintenance, replace equipment that is damaged after heavy rain, for example, pay for the internet access link… And most importantly: the network You have to create your own content, which values ​​and speaks to the local community”, says Potyra Aguiar, educator and PSP representative in Anatel’s Working Group on Community Networks, created last year.

The group’s objective is to understand the needs of community networks spread across Brazil, which have not yet been quantified, and to find out how the government can support them, whether through specific legislation or resources.

“One of the ideas discussed is to use part of Fust’s resources [Fundo de Universalização dos Serviços de Telecomunicações] to support community networks”, says Nilo Pasquali, superintendent of Planning and Regulation at Anatel.

Fust is maintained by large telecommunications operators and amounts to around R$1 billion, money planned for expanding networks, according to Pasquali. “Community networks require few resources, the use of Fust and other funds, such as the FNDE, for education, is on the agenda for discussions”, he says.

Network increases sales and brings entertainment to rural neighborhoods

In Souzas, maintaining the network is the responsibility of Camargo and Marcus Lisboa, a pizza maker and bricklayer’s assistant who was so excited about installing Portal Sem Porteiras in the neighborhood that he decided to learn about the technology.

“It was quite a change! Before we depended on dial-up internet and, later, on a pre-paid package on our cell phones. We could only watch a few minutes of film and the connection would end”, says Lisboa.

Anyone who wanted more time online needed to look for cell phone signal on the street, on the church steps. “Now I can watch an entire movie lying in my bed,” she says.

Trader Stephany Godói, who runs a grocery store and bakery with her husband in the neighborhood, started accepting cards and Pix. Her sales increased by 50%.

“A lot of tourists who passed through here didn’t have cash, everyone asked for cards and we couldn’t get through,” he says. “Even people in the neighborhood wanted this practicality. Now they buy more.”

The internet also brought some concerns. Mother of three girls — ages 4, 13 and 16 —, Stephany now fears the type of content children have access to.

“Before, there were no cell phones. Now it’s just cell phones and we have to stay on top of them, monitoring what they watch,” he says.

Born in Caraguatatuba, on the coast of São Paulo, Stephany arrived in Souzas in 2018. She participated in a radio soap opera, an initiative by Portal Sem Porteiras to bring the neighborhood’s residents closer to technology. She loved the experience. “The people here are very special, they welcome you,” she says.

But the theme of the radio soap opera, domestic violence, was not easy to face. The subject made her relive the past: she was abused by her own father when she was 5 years old, the same situation experienced by her two older sisters.

The mother was an alcoholic. Stephany left home at 12 and had her first daughter at 17. “Today I managed to overcome all the trauma,” she says. “But there is a lot of evil in the world. If I could, I would raise my daughters in a bubble.”