Wall Street Journal | January 7, 2011 | Gerald Jeffris
BRASILIA (Dow Jones)–Brazil’s government will pay public and private energy companies for access to their fiber optics networks under its plans to expand broadband services to the public, Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo was quoted Friday as saying by the Folha de S. Paulo news service.
Bernardo said the state-run telecom Telebras (TELB4.BR) would contract the services of other state companies, Eletrobras (ELET6.BR) and Petrobras (PETR4.BR), as well as private companies, to operate a 30,000-kilometer broadband network.
He made the comments following a meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
The network expansion is part of a government plan to offer broadband services to low-income consumers at a rate of about 30 Brazilian reais ($17.96) per month.
Bernardo, who held a post as Brazil’s planning minister until the end of December, said he didn’t yet have an estimate of how much the network expansion project would cost, but guaranteed that federal budget funding would be available for it.
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