SÃO PAULO–The internet of things entered is firmly on the Brazilian government’s agenda. With roughly a quarter of its GDP coming from agribusiness, Brazil wants to use the IoT in rural areas to improve its agricultural methods and get better results. The potential is vast, as noted by Mariana Vasconcelos, CEO of Agrosmart, in a video interview with RCR Wireless News, during last week’s Futurecom event. She is the daughter of a farmer and saw huge potential to boost his production by using technology. Then, she created a startup and has implemented its solutions in several rural areas in Brazil and abroad.
Unlocking $200 billion
Brazil wants to play a big role in IoT. In order to meet this goal BNDES, the Brazilian Development Bank, and the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication (MCTIC) commissioned a study to better understand which areas the country would have more potential and which areas should the government focus on in terms of developing growth strategies and policies.
The study, made by McKinsey, Fundação CPqD and Pereira Neto Macedo, highlighted that the adoption of internet of things could add revenues of $200 billion by 2025. Agribusiness is not the only government target; it will also focus on developing IoT applications for smart cities (especially mobility and security), industries and health.
“A very few countries have a national IoT plan as we are setting,” said Maximiliano Martinhão, Secretariat for Informatics Policy from the MCTIC, during Futurecom. “The study will be the foundation of the government policies for the development of IoT national plan. [It] can boost both industries and agribusiness productivity and improve our lives in the cities,” he added.
However, the path to digital transformation in Brazil is just begging. According to a study made by Logicalis, 71% of the companies surveyed believe IoT will be high or extremely high relevant for business over the next 3 to 5 years, but only 18% of interviewed executives said their companies have already adopt IoT and 19% said they are in the process of adoption IoT solutions.
As of carriers, some carriers are labelling 2G for M2M applications and bet 5G will boost and spread definitively IoT. Luis Minoru Shibata, chief strategy officer at TIM Brasil, said, in a panel, that TIM should prioritize CAT-M and NB-IoT as standards, at least for now. In a video interview with RCR Wireless News (check here), he added that carrier is looking to develop IoT solutions in four areas: health, agribusiness, smart cities and transportation.
Marcio Gerbovic, diretor at Nokia, noted that agribusiness is a major market and highlighted that the true value of IoT remains on what companies are capable of doing with the collected data. “They need to generate value from the data, using intelligence platforms.” Luis Faray, director at Oi, added that telecom operators are crucial for the internet of things deployment as “connectivity will call for 15% of IoT revenues”, he noted. “It’s not a golf game that you play alone. It’s more similar to rugby, you need partners. Oi understand it’s a much broad game and we are fomenting an ecossistem of startups to stablish partnerships,” he said.
