[November 27, 2009] Brazilian Amazon battles isolation with digital technology Tweet Santarem, Brazil, Nov 27, 2009 (EFE via COMTEX) -- By Eduardo de Diego. ).- Brazil's Amazon region was more in touch with the world starting Friday thanks to a new antenna bringing an Internet broadband connection and 3G cell-phone technology to close to 20,000 people in remote communities in the northern state of Para. The antenna, which began working Friday, was installed on Oct. 12 on a trial basis in the small Belterra municipality of around 13,000 inhabitants, which up to now has lived without any mobile-phone connection or Internet in the deepest Amazon. The project was developed by cell-phone operator Vivo, a joint venture of Spain's Telefonica and Portugal Telecom together with Ericsson of Sweden, as part of a wider project of digital inclusion being carried out by the NGO Saude e Alegria, which for 22 years has been working to overcome the region's isolation. Until last year, according to the Anatel regulatory agency, the digital gap affected 1,836 of Brazil's 5,557 municipalities. That number, according to Anatel's superintendent of private services, Jarbas Valente, has been drastically reduced in the last year, leaving little more than 400 municipalites still unconnected, all of which, the official said, should emerge from digital isolation before next April. The greatest challenge is in the Amazon states of Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Para, Rondonia, Roraima and Tocantins, where a Unicef report says there are still 90,000 illiterate adolescents and approximately 160,000 children between 7 and 14 who aren't in school. "This isn't charity, but giving these communities the tools they need to become self-sustaining," the president of Ericsson Brazil, Fatima Raimondi, told Efe, adding that "bringing communications to these places improves their standard of living." For Raimondi, projects like these boost Amazon communities' autonomy, make them less dependent and increase their negotiating power "because without knowledge or education they lose the power to negotiate." The executive took the occasion to deny what some claim to be these inhabitants' lack of interest in new technologies, noting that "as soon as the antennas are installed, people start using them." "It's not for want of money that people don't connect, but for lack of access," Raimondi said. The new Belterra Base Radio Station, with its 60-kilometer (37-mile) range, will also launch a monitoring tool for the region that will be employed fundamentally in the environmental and health fields. This tool will help obtain more information about the area and its quality-of-life indices. In addition, according to Raimondi, it will help unite the social and environmental functions of the station in the fight against Amazon deforestation. Meanwhile local authorities spoke of the need to preserve the identity of the communities and of the challenge they face in their attempt to "integrate into the world while remaining Amazonian." A further challenge, undoubtedly, for a region battling against remaining excluded from the fruits of bonanza and growth that the country has enjoyed in recent years. EFE edv/cd [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]