Statement by
Mr. Renato Navarro Guerreiro
President, Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações (ANATEL) 
Federative Republic of Brazil

Tuesday, 19 March 2002

From the time of the last World Conference on the Development of Telecommunications, held in Malta, in 1998, until this meeting, Brazilian telecommunications have experienced an extraordinary transformation. Brazil today has a modern telecommunications system. I dare to say that the Brazilian telecommunications sector in 2002 is comparable with that of countries taken to be the reference points in this field. With regard to the regulatory framework, it has become one of the most advanced in the world.

From July 1998, when the state telecommunications companies were privatized, until last February, the Brazilian stock of fixed telephony grew from 20 Million terminals (12.5 terminals per 100 inhabitants) to 49 million (28.6 terminals per 100 inhabitants). The index of poor families with telephones advanced from less than 8% to around 50%; the number of public telephones leaped from 550 thousand (3.4 public telephones per 1000 inhabitants) to 1 million, 400 thousand (8.1 public telephones per 1000 inhabitants). Every community of more than one thousand people has a local and long distance telephone service, even including the indigenous settlements located mainly in the Amazon Region. In mobile telephony, the jump was from 5 million, 600 thousand accesses (3.5 accesses per 100 inhabitants) to 29 million and 22 thousand (17 accesses per 100 inhabitants).

This set of facts is the material evidence of one of the most vibrant projects for universalizing telecommunications in recent years, in the whole world. Alongside this, competition has reduced prices and eliminated barriers between rich and poor citizens, making telecommunications services available and accessible to all social strata, all over the country.

The adoption in 1999 of the call-by-call operator selection code for long-distance services accelerated competition in fixed telephony and freed users from the monopoly situation. There are still some competition difficulties in local telephony, in which the new entrants have not so far managed to respond adequately to market expectations. In fact, this is a problem common to the whole world.

The stock that exists today is the basis for the Information Highways that are creating the conditions for all Brazilian citizens to access applications like the Internet, Tele-education and distant medicine. The full utilization of the means of telecommunications will cause unprecedented economic and social consequences in society, ensured in the Brazilian case by a Fund formed from resources coming from all the operators acting in Brazil, which will support programs that will extend the telecommunications networks into the rural areas and to all communities with at least 100 inhabitants.

These new networks, which cover the 8 million, 500 thousand square kilometers of Brazil’s territory, constitute the basis for making it possible to diminish the digitally excluded contingent. We are ready to start the installation of 290 thousand computers in 13 thousand public schools, benefiting more than seven million students at high school and technical school levels.

The near future in Brazilian telecommunications will mark out new victories. In January, we will start the complete liberalization of the sector and, in a few weeks’ time, new providers of Personal Mobile Services will come into operation. Another new thing will be the rules for wide-band services, through Multimedia Communication Services. By the middle of this year, the digital standard for terrestrial television transmission will be defined.

This time, the World Conference on the Development of Telecommunications proposes to deal with the technological advances and applications, and different nations’ difficulties and needs, so as to give support to the ITU in its arduous and heightened task of promoting the development of the sector. In other words, to identify – as Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi pointed out well in a recent message – the manner in which the reform of the sector and investments in information technology can contribute towards the improvement of countries’ infrastructures and the well-being of excluded people all over the world.

I believe that Brazil is able to contribute to this proposal. More than this: we are open to share our experiences with international organizations, governments and regulatory bodies. It is this experience of success that leads us to present the name of Mr. Roberto Blois, Vice-Secretary-General of the ITU, for reelection at the Plenipotentiary Conference in Marrakech.

Finally, I would like to register my thanks to the organizers of this event for this opportunity, and my wishes for the success of the conference. To the Turkish people, through its authorities present here, I express the pleasure I have in being in this important and ancient city of culture that unites Asia and Europe, the cradle of extraordinary chapters in the history of humanity.

Thank you very much.