Three years before holding the 2014 World Cup, Brazil needs to define important issues, including wireless infrastructure standards. Representatives from the Ministry of Communications, the Ministry of Sports and Telecomp, an association that focuses on increasing telecom sector competition, the executives said they are still working on a responsibility matrix, a document that details commitments made by all institutions involved in organizing the World Cup. Comments were made during an the “ICT for World Cup and Olympic Games” event, sponsored by Informa Telecoms & Media.Although government agencies are aware and working on some topics, a lot of issues haven’t been addressed yet.
The whole ICT infrastructure may be ready just six months before the biggest sporting event in the world. “It’s a gradual process, and there are several requirements and investments that needed to be done. As an example, we have to do the auction for 4G spectrum, because we want to have at least 80% of territorial of cities that will hold games covered by 4G,” said Artur Coimbra de Oliveira, director of broadband department from Ministry of Communications (Minicom). Julio Puschel, senior analyst and head of mobile operator strategy at Informa, estimates that there will be 107 million 3G mobile lines and 4.7 million LTE lines by 2014.
According to Coimbra, Brazil’s government responsibility is to make available all ICT infrastructure obliged by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). “We committed ourselves to deploy the highest international standards, links of redundancy and international gateways,” said Coimbra. Today, he said, the government is clarifying with FIFA the infrastructure requirements to address what need to be done.
Coimbra explained that Brazilian carrier Oi has signed a contract with FIFA to provide telecom services and Brazil’s duty is provide infrastructure. “We’ve already mapped existing backbone and backhaul. Besides, our survey showed that 28 of 143 potential training centers have access to link.”
Where there are gaps in infrastructure, the Minicom director explained that the government could activate Telebrás to build another fiber link, for example. “Telebrás counts with R$ 200 million from investments focused on World Cup and Olympics Games infrastructure.”
The deployment of World Cup infrastructure is divided in three stages. The first one happened between 2009 to 2010 and focused on infrastructure, involving R$ 25 billion of investments. The second phase began in 2010 and is running until the end of 2011. It is focused on infrastructure and services. The third and last phase is focused on operations and specific actions.
However, according to Rodrigo Meira, of Value Partners, which is consulting with the Ministry of Sports, the second and third phases don’t have investments defined yet. “The main purpose is to meet FIFA’s demands on issues, such as broadcasting, accelerating 4G diffusion in those cities that will hold World Cup, as well as, expanding fiber optic in metropolitan areas and building data center in Fortaleza,” explained Meira.
Meira said that by 2012, nine stadiums will have all infrastructure ready in order to hold FIFA 2013 Confederations Cup.
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